“Can you read the words? I read the book”

This may be one of my favorite questions and statements I often receive from my two year old. I love that he understands that he is reading when he pays attention to the illustrations and photographs in books. He understands that there is more than one way to read a book. Paying attention to the features of a book and how the topic or story is portrayed through images is incredibly important for readers at all abilities. When I work with kindergarten and first grade teachers, we often talk about multiple ways to read a book. Encouraging children to read in these ways can increase their understanding and their confidence. If you are a classroom teacher, I highly recommend checking out Lindsey Moses’ and Meredith Ogden’s book: What Are The Rest of My Kids Doing? (click on title)

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Here are four ways your child can read:

1. read the pictures/images

2. read the words

3. read the words, pictures, and design elements

4. retell the story

1. Read the pictures/images

* Paying attention to the illustrations and photographs can help your child understand the author’s point of view, the characters, who’s telling the story and so much more.

* We love reading books where the illustrations give you hints or “secret” information. Take This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen (and all of his other books) for example. This fun book requires that the reader pay attention to the illustrations in order to understand what is happening in the story. For emergent readers (readers who are not reading the words yet), they can easily tell the story by reading the illustrations after you have read them the story.

* After reading and rereading, pattern books like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, I Went Walking, and Cookie’s Week, your child can easily read the illustrations to tell the story. Encourage your child to read with you as you read these aloud. This practice will help your child remember the text as they are retelling the story based on the illustrations. They may even start to recognize some of the words.

* Reading the images can also help your child make inferences which will also help when they are reading chapter books with few or no images and they are relying on their imagination. For example, my daughter just checked out the book Dogs by Emily Gravett. This book has a fantastic twist and requires that the reader pay attention to the illustration to see who is telling the story in this book. Click the title to check it out.

* Readers can learn a great deal about characters when they pay attention to the character’s facial expressions and body language shown in the illustrations. By paying attention to these elements, your child will understand the story so much better.

2. Read the words

* As your child knows more spelling patterns, has more strategies for figuring out tricky words, and recognizes more words, they are able to read the print in a book or text. This is also known as reading conventionally.

* As you child reads the print, continue to encourage them to notice the images and design elements too.

3. Read the words, pictures, and design elements

* There are so many features included in books that we want children to pay attention to. We want them to pay attention to the images, text features, and the words. All of this together contributes to their understanding of the text.

Image considerations

– Highlight how an illustrator has laid out the page.
– Is there one image in the center?
– Are there multiple frames that show events over time?
– Does the image show movement? (Some kids miss that illustrators use lines to show a character moving fast or squiggle lines to show a character shivering)
– How does the illustrator or photographer use perspective or color to convey meaning?

Understanding Text Features

Make sure your child stops to notice visuals such as maps, graphs, timelines, charts and captions.
– Most children can identify what a text feature is but the more important thing is – do they know what it’s for and how to use it?

– Ask your child: what information did you learn here?
– Ask your child: why is this important?

Help your child know how text features can help their reading and how to plan for pages that have text features. Read about strategies to help with this by clicking this link

Reading the words.

When most of us think of reading, we automatically think about reading the words on a page. Support your child as they read the words by offering lean prompts when needed. Prompting should be encouraging and should allow your child to do most of the work. To learn more about that click here.

4. Retell the story

After you have read and reread a story, encourage your child to retell the story. Let them tell the story as they turn the pages of the book.

Listen to what your child includes in their retelling.

i. Are they talking about the main points?

ii. Are they talking about the main characters?

iii. Are they talking about the problem and the solution?

iv. Are they mostly accurate about the details in the book?

You can prompt your child to add in some of the elements or details they may have left out. Make sure to be really encouraging and honor the reading they have done.

If you want to know more about ways of encouraging our young readers, I highly encourage reading the book I Am Reading by Kathy Collins and Matt Glover (2015).