Educational Mumbo Jumbo

When your children are reading it is imperative for them to continue to build their individual schema and offer opportunities for metacognition through text to self, text to world, and text to text relationships.  Got it? No?  Well, let me help you understand why reading is so important...

How many of you read to your kids, close the book, and wonder, "What good did that actually do?"  We all know reading to our kids is important, but why?  To build vocabulary?  To model fluency? To help foster the love of reading?  Why is it so important, and how do we make the most of our time while reading to our kids?

First off, you can NEVER go wrong reading to your child.  While you're reading, your child will pick up natural elements of reading.  They learn what good reading sounds like; the changes of your voice, and natural pauses at punctuation.  They learn the general layout of a book.  Text goes from left to right, and pages turn to the left. These are natural elements that your child will pick up on without you ever talking about it with them.  You'll never say, "Now Lilly, I'm going to grab this page on the right and pull it over to the left so we can continue reading."  Kids just pick up on this without direct instruction.  So if all you're doing with your child is reading aloud and closing the book, you're still teaching.

If you're not too bored with this post, come back tomorrow.  That's when we'll get down to the nitty-gritty.  I'll start to share what endless classes on children's literacy taught me.  Kind of like a college education bloggy style (aka...ya' won't be payin' me no tuition for some good information!)

Now here's your homework...

Define the following:

• metacognition
• schema
• text to text
• text to self
• text to world

I would like these definitions typed, double spaced and due at 9:00am tomorrow.  Kidding.  Only kidding.  See you tomorrow!