Pinehurst Elementary School

1.   Have your child place tabs, post-it notes, bookmark tracker, or Wikki Stix (Bendaroos) every few pages before he/she begins reading. These will be stopping points to tell the big ideas of what happened so far. Encourage main points here, as many kids who struggle with this just

repeat details they can remember.

 

2.   Encourage your child to visualize what is happening in the story. What does the scene feel like?  Use the five senses to encourage deeper thought.

 

3.   Have your child retell the story with a beginning, middle, and end.  For older children, you would do this with chapters and at the end encourage his or her own thoughts on what would happen next.  Encourage them to restate the chapter in a sequential order. 

 

4.   Try to make a connection to the book on a personal level.

 

5.   When you see an opportunity to "read between the lines" or infer, ask your child, "What is really going on here?"