Supporting Reading at Home

Parents, it’s important to support your child’s reading at home and while I can share many different strategies, I want to focus on this specific one when your child is reading a magazine, article, newspaper, or anything else they make come across. The following is something that I found on “6 Techniques for Building Reading Skills—in Any Subject” by Susan Barber

Teach Close Reading Skills

Guide students in annotation by directing them to do more than highlight or underline. Encourage students to have a conversation with the text by jotting notes on the text while reading—this keeps students engaged and often increases comprehension. Annotations can include:

  • Defining new words
  • Asking questions
  • Coding recurring words and themes
  • Making personal connections to the text
  • Citing current events
  • Highlighting heading and subheadings
  • Summarizing paragraphs
  • Chunking
  • Categorizing information
  • Numbering and ordering
  • Drawing pictures

The list of possibilities is endless—the point is to have students form their own process when approaching a text. But don’t be afraid to give students specific annotation guidelines such as “annotate the writer’s characterization techniques” or “find examples of . . .” to help them focus. Annotations also help students identify which strategies work best for them as they try to process and understand information. The clip (belows) “Girls Read Comic” from The Big Bang Theory is a great way to introduce the concept of reading closely and its importance.

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