Literacy Tips

Book Learnin'
Discover how to read to your kids

1. Ask your kids to look at the cover and name any objects and characters they know. Read the title and the author's name. See if the cover and title remind you of any other books you've read together.
2. Flip through the pages and note other objects and characters in the pictures. (This is called "previewing" the book.) Ask your kid to guess what the story might be about.
3. Point to each word on the page as you read it. Ask questions like, "What do you think will happen next?" Stop once or twice to compare the story to your kid's guesses about it.
4. Afterwards, sum up the story line (plot). Talk about the beginning, middle, and end of the book.
5. Connect the story line to real-life events. Did something like this ever happen to you or your kid? Do the characters remind you of anyone you know?
6. Evaluate the book. Did your kid like the story? What was the best part? The funniest picture? The silliest character?
7. When you reread the book, ask your kid to hold the book, look at the pictures, and tell YOU the story.
8. Point out details in the pictures. Ask about some of the details each time you reread this book. Try to expand on your kid's answers to help the sentences grow. The best questions often begin with "why" or "what do you think?"
9. Help your child learn to read the words on the pages. Point to the letters and see how they match the sounds in the words. Look for these words in other places. See if you can spot the spelling patterns in other words.
10. Help your kid take over as the reader of this book.

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Story Time
How to get the most from any story while you read to your kids

1. Show kids that the words you are reading are the text on the page. This seems obvious, but kids can think you're making it up from the pictures. Let them know it's mostly the text that carries the meaning. Follow the words with your finger as you read.
2. Show them the cover and title page. Announce the name of the author and illustrator. This is to let them know that real people wrote this story. It might inspire them to make a book of their own. It will also help them find more books by the same writer.
3. Show them that books start at the front, and go through to the end; that you read from top to bottom, and from left to right. Point out page numbers to kids learning to count.
4. Read the story aloud with enthusiasm. Be the world's greatest actor! Do silly voices.
5. Stop from time to time to ask questions about what might happen next.
6. Let them interrupt to ask questions, even if they're jumping ahead in the story. This shows they are involved in what you're reading.
7. Let the kids see any pictures. Ask them if they can tell the story from the pictures.
8. See if they can read familiar words or the names of characters when they appear in the text.
9. Change part of a story that they might know by heart, and see if they notice. Or, in a new story, swap in a word that's wrong, and let them correct you. Did Laura Ingalls Wilder really move to a little spaceship on the prairie?
10. If your story has rhymes, obvious pictures or recurring words or phrases, stop to let them guess the end of a line. Ned, Ted and Fred fell out of... what?

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After Story Time
How to get the most from any story after you've read to your kids

1. Ask them to summarize the story. See if they can tell you what happened at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. Give lots of praise and support where necessary.
2. Ask which characters they liked or didn't like. Maybe write a simple book review or book report with them. You can see book reviews by some older kids at the ZOOM Web site.
3. Ask them to think about different points of view. How might different people in the story feel about what happened?
4. Talk about how the story could be changed. If the stepsisters were nice to Cinderella, the fairy godmother would never have shown up!
5. In our stories, Lionel and Leona sometimes change the endings. Look at your child's favorite stories and imagine different endings together.
6. Read true-life stories and talk about other people's lives. For example, imagine what life was like for Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Little House books.
7. Find similar books to encourage different explorations of the same topic.
8. Imagine the story slightly changed. If the pigs had fifty more brothers, could the wolf have blown down fifty-three houses? What would a story called Goldilocks and the Three Hairs be like?
9. Read books that offer a different version of familiar stories, and discuss the differences with your kids. There are lots of different stories about the three little pigs, for example.
10. Talk about the themes in the book you read. How do they relate to your real-life experience as a family?

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Poetry for the Rest of Us
Discover that poetry is fun

1. Make up rhymes together. Trade words with your kids as you find words for each other to rhyme. Keep away from orange and purple! They're pretty hard to rhyme.
2. Make up poems together. They don't have to rhyme.
3. Check out Fern's poems on the Arthur Web site.
4. Check out other kids' poems every week on our ZOOM Web site.
5. Read poetry books for kids. There are some great compilation books. Look out for authors like Shel Silverstein, Roger McGough, Maya Angelou and Jack Prelutsky.
6. Visit your library and spend time with their poetry books. Remember to ask the librarians for their favorites.
7. Learn how to say a favorite poem without reading it. Kids will relish the challenge.
8. Don't know any poems? Choose the words to a favorite song. The Beatles wrote some great songs that make great poems. Learn those.
9. Print our pictures from the stories on our Web site, and see if you and your kids can re-tell its story as a poem.

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The Big Book of Words
Have fun with a dictionary

1. Look at kids' dictionaries at the library or bookstore. (Don't forget that many of the big bookstores let you read without buying anything!) We especially like Richard Scarry's dictionaries, but there are many other good ones, too.
2. Look for words with several meanings, and imagine stories that use them all. Can you watch a watch? Do elephants travel with trunks? How do flies fly? What makes pop pop? What can a cook cook?
3. Look for opposites. Pick a word, and look for its opposite.
4. Use the dictionary to look up new words that have come up in conversation, on the radio or in stories they've heard. Show them how to spell the word, and how it's arranged alphabetically. Show them that phone books are the same way.
5. Pick a word your kid knows, and ask them to make up their definition of it, or, more simply, to use the word in a sentence.
6. Keep a notebook where kids can draw pictures to go with words. Not everyone can draw, so keep it simple: A - apple, B - ball, C - cat, D - dog, E - egg etc. Soon your kid will have made their very own dictionary.

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