What does reading look like?

Today students learned there are 3 ways to read a book:

• Read the Pictures
• Read the Words 
• Retell the Story

When I told the students that they were already readers this morning, they all yelled "No, I can't read."  I told the students that there are many ways to read and today we will explore three.  As a class we read the pictures in the story The Kissing Hand.  The students help construct the story by looking at the pictures and talking about what could be happening (I really emphasized that authors write books that make sense, so the ideas that we create based on the picture should make sense too!).  When we finished reading the pictures I closed the book and joke with the students that they told me they could not read but they just did!  The room erupted with laughter.  

Here are a few photos of the students in our class reading the pictures today!

Listen the the buzz of the early readers in our classroom today by clicking here.

I read the words to The Kissing Hand and we talked about reading the words as another type of reading that we will do this year.  Tomorrow we will work on making the connection that many of the students can already read some words in context like stop, exit, Meijer, Burger King, etc.  

Students made a handprint today to share with families, this was a visual to help remind them of what the story was about and a little something for the moms and dads out there that were missing their kiddos today (me included).  Tomorrow we will reread the story and practice retelling the story in sequence using character names.  

Have fun reading all three ways with your child:  Share the task and read the pictures in a book and create a story that makes sense, read the words to your child in books and retell stories you have already read using the pictures from the story and the storybook language that goes with it (FROOOOOOOGGGGGGGY, yelled mom...etc).