Bedtime Stories 101
Years before a child enters school and officially begins their academic journey, their education has already begun at home. An experienced (read: professional) teacher knows that every child’s first teacher is their family.
And while we often emphasize the socioemotional and cultural knowledge that families pass to their children, we also recognize the critical role families play in a child’s emerging literacy skills. (Many of us can remember the important “Read to your baby” campaigns that schools, libraries, and early education centers encouraged).
As a committed early educator, I’ve taught literacy in classrooms across New York City. I’ve promoted reading and writing skills in bilingual children—teaching in English, French, and my own emergent Spanish. I’ve designed and differentiated literacy lessons from infants to second graders.
After all, when teachers support children’s literacy, they must have an expert understanding of childhood development. In my preschool class, I have to know where my students are coming from. What were they able to do as 3-year-olds? Which communication skills have they learned only the summer before I met them? To be an efficient and quality educator, I must also know where they are going. Which reading and writing standards will they meet as kindergarteners? Second graders? This knowledge guides my practice, and it makes me a better literacy teacher for my students.
And even with:
my undergraduate training in developmental psychology at Carnegie Mellon;
my masters degree in early education from Teachers College at Columbia University;
and my years of student teaching and experience as a head teacher . . .
I'‘m still learning new information on how to teach young children reading and writing. I attend yearly workshops and professional developments, I study the latest research, and I fully immerse myself into childhood literacy.
I say all of this to tell you that teaching reading is a serious profession. And despite the wonderful knowledge we are learning on our Instagram newsfeed, it is not a skill that can be mastered with an IG post.
So while I did create the informative post below, I wanted to give you the tools you need to support your child’s literacy development at home.
Credit: @allusio.academy (Instagram)
We’re keeping it simple; no flashy pictures or diagrams here. These are some of the exact strategies and techniques I learned in all of my teacher experiences and trainings. They sound simple and straightforward. They are. Understanding the concept takes, well, however much time it will take you to read this blog post. Mastering them will take years of practice and experience.
And I guarantee that simply scrolling past my Instagram post might help, but reading this blog post will help you understand the theory behind each tip. I’m confident that you’ll be more likely to remember these strategies and know how to apply them in meaningful ways. So congratulations on taking a big step in supporting your child’s reading!
Let’s begin!
What To Do
(yes, you should definitely do these things)
Ask your child to choose the book.
This might come off as an obvious practice, but you’d be surprised by how many adults need this reminder. Think back to your experience as a student. Were you more likely to read an assigned book for school that didn’t resonate with you . . . or a story that you chose yourself?
Your child’s agency in choosing books should begin at the library or bookstore. Curate a home library that’s filled with favorites stories that will support their love of reading.
Look through the book and make predictions before reading the text.
Teachers call this a book walk. I personally love this reading technique. And there are a number of ways to go about it.
Basically, your objective is to practice reading the pictures in the story. Illustrations are a significant part of children’s literature. To a child who does not yet read, it is arguably the most significant part—aside from the adult reader’s storytelling. Honor the fact that they are learning to read symbolism. Kindergarten teachers will teach their students how to use pictures as context clues to read new words. Why not support this critical skill in your young child?
Added bonus: It teaches critical thinking skills, such as formulating order-of-events, recognizing problems, and identifying solutions. But remember, it could ruin the ending of some fun, silly books. So give it a quick read-through before inviting your child to do a book walk.
Tips:
Ask your child to begin their prediction with the cover. What do you see? What do you think this book is about?
Try to let your child guide the prediction. Encourage them by making your own observations, but the goal is not to correct. I see this person looks so angry. I wonder what happened.
Bring in post-it notes for an elevated experience. Place a post-it note over the words in the text, and record your child’s predictions as the first read-through of the story. Documenting their words on paper is a powerful way to teach the role of language, reading, and writing in our lives.
Read the same story several times.
Some people are avid believers of reading a book or watching a movie only once. I personally regard each experience as transformative. Each time I read a story, my experience with the book is different. Partly because I myself have changed and grown. And partly due to the information I now know about the text.
Thankfully, many children already ask their families to read the same story over and over (and over and over) again. If I have to pretend to be Gerald and Piggie one more time . . . I will gladly do so. Since you’re probably already re-reading texts, here is a teacher’s rationale for why this practice matters.
Children absorb material at different paces and in different ways. Offer your child many opportunities to interact with the same story. They will notice new things each time.
Re-reading a story will strengthen their understanding of the plot, new vocabulary, and character growth.
Life happens. So each time a child returns to the same story, they are practicing making connections to experience or knowledge from their own life. The ability to make connections is critical and necessary for all across academic subjects, such as language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.
Invite your child to read the story to you.
Now that you’ve introduced the story through book walks and re-reads, invite your child to be “Daddy" or “Grandma” and read the story to you. Watch to see if they give different characters unique voices. Notice whether they point to the pictures or trace their finger along the words and letters as they narrate.
All of these small actions are crucial in emerging readers. The more your child practices them, the stronger of a reader they will be down the line.
What Not To Do
(please, try your very hardest to avoid these habits)
Don’t limit yourself to books in your home language.
Just as reading the pictures is important to supporting your child’s literacy, so is seeing new languages and alphabets. Even if you don’t speak the language at all, you can model the same skills that you are encouraging in your child. Read the story through the illustrations. Make predictions. Translate the symbols and images.
And do I have to mention the importance of early exposure to diversity? Spoken languages and written alphabets are some of the single coolest achievements made by humans. Seriously! How incredible is it that we decided some straight lines and curves carry the entire weight of human emotions and dreams? I’m personally blown away by the historical evolution of language.
Did you know that most written languages in the world are influenced, if not directly descendent, from the Phoenician alphabet (the world’s first written alphabet) or by Aramaic (an ancient language still spoken by Semitic people, such as minority populations in Maaloula, Syria)? And even cooler, the word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Phoenician language: aleph & bet.
Another fun fact (since this tangent has begun): each Phoenician letter represented a sound as well as a symbol (think: hieroglyphics). So bet was the Semitic word for house, which is why the word “house” in Arabic is still “bayt”. And in parts of Italy, a “baita” is a rural dwelling. This five-thousand-year-old word is literally the letter B in Latin-based alphabets. How exceptionally cool is that!? And that’s just on the second letter of one alphabet. Why would you not introduce your child to humanity’s greatest and most universal invention?
So go pick up that Korean version of “Llama Llama”. Ask your local library for bilingual versions of different texts. Teach your child how to appreciate the wonderful world of languages.
Don’t turn the page until your child is finished exploring the picture.
Another strategy that goes without saying, but it must be discussed. Your child’s first way of interacting with texts and literature is through images and illustrations. Imagine if we were reading the same newspaper, and you impatiently turned the page before I could finish? I wouldn’t be too excited about reading with you, after that.
Ask your child if they’re finished. Better yet, teach them to carefully turn pages from the top or bottom corners, and give them full control of your bedtime reading pace.
Don’t rush through stories and race to finish.
Similar to the previous tip, make sure to value the time you spend reading with your child. Give them an opportunity to fall in love with reading and literature. All children, and some more than others, need additional wait time to process information. Believe it or not, their four-year-old, brand new brain can’t make connections and interpret words or plots as quickly as your adult brain with its decades of experiences and neural connections.
Intentionally pause after reading a page. Slow down, and enjoy the moment.
Don’t read books without discussing the story or speaking with your child.
I touched on this above, and I’ll add a bit more. Children are constantly in the process of making neural connections. They recognize familiar ideas or things, and they become excited to notice it in other places (like a story). This process of making mental schemas is critical to our learning. It will carry over into our academic, professional and, most importantly, social lives. Help your child by guiding them into these connections. Hey, look at that bus stop over there. It’s just like the one that the little child and grandmother waited in in “Last Stop on Market Street!”.
The power of literature is in the way it speaks to us. Strong readers are those that have a rich understanding of the text and their own experiences. Encourage this skill in your child, even after you turn the last page and put the story down.
I truly hope this guide helps you help your young reader. While I chose the most important and easily-adaptable strategies, it can still be stressful or overwhelming to bring into your own life. If you’d like some personalized support or expert help, I would be happy to schedule a private consultation with you.
Happy reading!