Book Bags are officially coming home this coming Friday – Please read through the note and let me know if you have any questions!

Hello 🙂 It’s an exciting time of the year for the kindergarteners! We are starting to bring book bags home for the weekend 🙂 Book Bags will be going home every weekend (or end of the week) for the Kindergarteners to practice reading at their level, and will need to come back to school on Monday – please make sure they do come back on time!

Goals of guided/leveled reading:

• Learning new and reviewing old characters
• Practice different reading strategies
• Reading fluently as time goes
• Comprehending the reading material
• Enjoy reading 🙂

I wanted you to be aware that when we first start reading, the leveled books consist of many characters/vocabulary that the children already know. As they move further along and get higher level books, there are new characters and words to recognize, and stories that requires more “thinking” to comprehend. This means that there are times when they will practice reading the same book for a longer amount of time – because some of the characters are new, or they need more fluency practice.

I also wanted you to be aware that the books are shorter when we start (and often have patterns), so the children might have memorized it <which seem to show that they are ready to move on to the next book because they can read all the characters in their book, But when I have them recognize some of the characters as I recheck their reading (without pictures clue/pattern) the following week, they might not be able to fully do so>. In that case I will have them practice reading the same book at school during daily 5, and possibly sending the same book(s) home for more practice.

At home, you can help by:

• Reminding your child to point at each character as they read – have them look at the characters and not only brushing through even if they already know what the characters mean (from the picture clue).
• Have them slow down especially if the characters seem harder for them, also read with punctuation.
• When your child struggles at home, try to point them to the pictures and have them try recalling what the characters might be. After recalling characters, have them read the sentence again to see if it makes sense. (They usually will be able to tell if it makes sense or not.)
• Ask them what the book is about. Have them teach you about the characters and who/what are in the book?

*Please know that our Mandarin library is limited so please help me make sure that the books do come back to school and in good condition :)*

Let me know if you have any questions! Thank you once again for supporting your children at home!