A letter from a parent in New Haven CT.
January 3, 2013
Thank you to everyone who was involved in putting together the Literacy Workshop with Diane Frankenstein. My husband and I are avid readers, so going into the workshop I was anxious and excited to find out and learn what we could implement or change in our home that would help us, help our children find and keep their love for learning.
I left the workshop completely enthusiastic. As soon as I got home I took a few moments to review page 16 of Reading Together and chose a question I would use to initiate a conversation with our daughters.
I then asked our girls to look at the pictures of the book, Unlovable, and to tell me what they believed was happening. When I finished reading the book, magic happened. I utilized one of Diane Frankenstein’s conversation starters and changed it up a bit. Instead of asking our daughter’s “What would you do in this situation,” I asked them “if Alfred (the dog) was a child, and the other animals were children what would you do in this situation? Our five-year-old daughter, Zoë, became extremely emotional. She said, “Mom, don’t they know that everyone belongs? That it does not matter what we look like on the outside, because we are all the same on the inside? The conversation evolved from there.
It turned into a long successful conversation about how “judging” and treating individuals “different” because of the way they look is unacceptable. The conversation brought our little family together in an amazing way. It was also a joyous moment for us that there were questions we could ask that would help our kids get more from the books they read and continue their love of reading.
Students Fall Flat in Vocabulary Test
December 16, 2012
A recent article in the WSJ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323316804578163213067015532.html reported that children do not have adequate vocabularies, which impacts their ability to learn to read. While vocabulary is the foundation for acquiring strong literacy skills I do not agree with the article’s recommendation that parents need to be involved in teaching reading. Talking develops a child’s use and understanding […]
Robust vocabularies make for strong reading skills
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Study after study shows evidence that ties vocabulary size to higher socioeconomic status and greater educational achievement. By age 3, children who are raised in a professional household know twice as many words as do children raised on welfare. It is not simply the number of words, but also how they are used that is […]
2012 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
November 15, 2012
Here is my favorite quote of the day from William Alexander, (Goblin Secrets) the recipient of the 2012 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. “The way things are, are not the only possible way they can be. Stories are the first way we figured that out.”
How much is too much when it comes to children & the Internet?
November 12, 2012
A recent article in the NYT spoke of the trauma many people experienced when Storm Sandy knocked out Internet access for days. The author maintains “adults and children are overindulging in our devices, devoting ourselves to the trivial.” That is certainly debatable but what is irrefutable is the fact that young children need a different […]
