Post Discovery: Emergent Reader Book Suggestions from HeidiSongs

Hi Friends! 

One of the great frustrations in my career as a teacher of reading has been the sheer lack of good quality books available for beginning or "emergent" readers. Parents with the best of intentions will buy their kids the Level 1 readers at the book store but they are way too hard for little ones who are just learning how to read. I really enjoyed HeidiSongs' post about the books she used in her classroom. These are similar to the ones I use and in fact I own some of the very same ones. Please go over and check it out to get some new ideas for your readers. She says it's for kindergarten but I know lots of first graders who could use these too!

The Fluency Challenge

Hi Friends! Happy New Year! Here's a great post on simple ways to help your child read more fluently. Usually that means smoothly like an expert reader would read it. I especially like that Julie from Make Take Teach mentions rereading books to help with fluency and having a more experienced reader read it, too. That's why I'm a huge fan of reading simple poetry. In my classroom, every Friday we would add a fun, easy to read poem to our poetry folders. We would practice reading and re-reading them every week so that we could learn how to read smoothly and with expression. Check the blog article out here.