Happy Holidays! I hope you are enjoying your first days of winter break! We are so lucky at Woodland to have so many diverse backgrounds, cultures, and religions! At this time of year, I am celebrating our diversity and the wonderful school community we have built together!
In this blog I want to remind you how important it is that you read to and with your children EVERY day and encourage them to read, both silently and out loud. We know there are 5 cornerstones to a good reader:
- Phonics - how letters are linked to sounds (phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling patterns
- Phonemic Awareness - the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words
- Fluency - fluent readers: recognize words automatically, read aloud effortlessly and with expression, do not have to concentrate on decoding, focus on making connections and comprehension
- Vocabulary - word meanings
- Comprehension - understanding what is read
Fluency is the bridge that makes it all possible. Once children become fluent readers, they are able to make connections and their comprehension is high.
As I listen to children in all grade levels read during "Read to the Principal" times, it is really clear to me that those children who practice reading at home on a daily basis are by far the strongest readers.
While fluency is the bridge to strong reading skills, in math, fact fluency is the bridge. When children automatically know their basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts they are much more able to solve math problems accurately and in a timely manner. Knowing the facts, allows children to focus on the problem and the process for solving it, thus math skills are greatly improved.
So, please take time at home, in the car, on vacation, anywhere, to review the basic math facts and build reading fluency with your children. (As you read with your children, be sure to ask yes/no and open ended questions about what they are reading to build comprehension!) Once these two skills (reading and math fact fluency) are in place, the world of learning will truly open up for every child.
Thanks for all you do to support our work at Woodland and your children! Together, we will reach our goals of each child meeting or exceeding his/her learning targets in math and reading AND all students will be performing at grade level - which means our achievement gaps will be eliminated!!
Happy New Year!
Linda