Looking Forward, Looking Back

This time of year is full of opportunities for looking forward and looking back. Our biggest highlight from last week was the chance to see Ms. Deborah! She dropped by to let us know how she was doing and to wish the children well on their last school days and summer adventures.

  . 

As we think about summer, hopefully some of our reading strategy bookmarks have made it home to you! We learn a lot of reading strategies but have been concentrating on accuracy strategies or strategies for reading accurately. So far the children have learned the strategies we call Skippy Frog, Lips the Fish, Stretchy Snake and Eagle Eye. They will soon be practicing Flippy Dolphin, Chunky Monkey and Tryin' Lion! Each of the strategy bookmarks coming home have brief descriptions of the strategies so you can encourage them in your readers at home as you read together this summer. You can also find a quick reference poster here. 

 .  

As important as accuracy strategies are habits and practices that support comprehension. One of our Venn diagram checkin questions recently was around the children's ability to create mental images. It asked them to consider whether they had an image in their mind from the First Grade play they'd seen the day before, and/or if they had an image from their own play. Jessie examined the results and asked, "Why do so many people have an image from our play that was so long ago when the First Grade play was yesterday?" This rich question was brought to the children at our morning meeting, where they determined that you have strong mental images when you experience something over and over, when it means something to you, and when you understand it well. 

  . 

The children's mental images from the plays were supported by having seen or experienced these plays visually, but readers must create their own mental images based on what they hear/read and imagine. Readers' Workshop lessons this week used read aloud books to help the children consider how their own mental images might have similarities and differences from the way one illustrator imagined the story. 

Wondering how you can support this crucial comprehension skill in your child? There are some fun and simple ways!

• Read different versions of the same story and compare the ways different illustrators have imagined the story. Read some pages aloud without looking at the picture and then reveal the illustration, asking your child how their mental image differed (or had similarities). Share the way your mental image differed! Call attention to little details in the words that the illustrator captured in their artwork.
• Read stories without illustrations (or with few) to your child to develop his/her ability to create his/her own mental images.
• Replace screen time, which provides images for children, with audio stories, which allow them to practice creating their own mental images. Here's the link to my Pinterest album of my favorite audio resources for young children!  This is an awesome option for summer car trips!

This booklist from CCBC Madison gives concise descriptions of important comprehension skills for young readers as well as book suggestions for each of them; they refer to mental images as visualization. 

Brain science is also teaching us that creating mental images is an important component of executive function, and that storytelling is one of our most time-tested ways to do so. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscientist Adele Diamond recently visited Portland and talked about the role of storytelling to develop working memory, sustained attention and executive function. Her slides are here: you can search for 'storytelling' to read the relevant sections. 

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University gives a great description of executive function as well as a guide by age level for how you can help with executive function development in your child. 

Now that I've given you a summer job...What else is happening this week with your child?

We've been spending time thinking about next year! In addition to enjoying a First Grade play, we visited the Primary classroom on 6/4 and will visit Ms. Kucera's First Grade on 6/5 to learn more about those classrooms. Before each visit we think about our questions about Primary and First Grade and then have an opportunity to ask those questions during our visit as well as tour the rooms. 

  . 

I'll close with some images from the math story problem work we've been engaged in during class, along with math game play. We've been busy both writing our own problems and solving story problems!

 

 .