For those readers who are educators or teachers, you know the National Education Association (NEA) shares information on a variety of educational topics. Among those topics is C.A.R.E. and C.A.R.E. Strategies for Closing the Achievement Gaps. Those strategies include:
- Allowing students to select a reading partner.
- Showing a short video clip as a pre-reading activity.
- Reading aloud with stops for quick oral responses.
- Engaging students in challenging discussions of the meaning of reading materials that reflect on their direct experiences.
- Know your students reading level.
- Offering a child balanced reading that incorporates books about other cultures all year round.
- Reviewing with students how reading is of benefit physically, emotionally, intellectually….
- Including tasks that provide opportunities for students to apply content vocabulary and use content language in discussions or extended reading or writing assignments.
- Broadening your own palate, being a model by reading on your own (consider when you last read out of your comfort zone to explore another culture) and share your experience.
- Encouraging family involvement like providing time, space, quiet and materials for child’s studying, reading and hobbies; setting an example by reading at home and engaging in other learning activities….
For those readers who are family or friends, the NEA C.A.R.E. strategies include:
- Reading and listening to children read.
- Discussing school day, family members’ lives, and current events.
- Storytelling, recounting experiences, and sharing problem-solving strategies.
- Writing of all kinds (e.g., grocery lists, telephone messages, letters, diary entries).
- Relating everyday experiences to what is being learned in school, and using these experiences as teaching opportunities.
- Helping to expand vocabulary.
- Conducting family activities that help expand the world view.
Lily can recommend a few specially chosen books to enhance the reading program in your child’s life that pertain to culture. Explore the LeveledReader books chosen by our assembled team of educators and other professionals to bring the power of the leveling system to everyday popular literature with regard to culture…such as:
- A Bad Case of Stripes. A story about fitting in and being true to yourself. [Age Level: 7-9. Grade Level: 2-4.]
- Sacagawea and the Bravest Deed. A glimpse into what life may have been like during the childhood years of one of our most famous Americans, a member of the Shoshone tribe. [Age Level: 5-7. Grade Level: K-1. Leveled Group: G-H-I.]
- Helen Keller and the Big Storm. This book fits in with both the NEA’s literacy program and next month as “Better Hearing and Speech Month”. Among other things, it helps learn about the life of someone who is deaf and blind, helps develop an interest in learning sign language and is an introduction to biographies. [Age Level: 4-7. Grade Level: K-1. Leveled Group: G-H-I.]
And do join the NEA’s year-round Reading Across America literacy program that celebrates the joy and importance of reading by visiting their site at http://www.nea.org.
Quote: “The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones, but in the echoes of our hearts.” Oliver Wendell Holmes.
