Hello parents of the class!

I would like to use this letter to try and give you some insight into the reading journey that
your children will be undertaking this year! Throughout the year and in every subject your
children will be engaging with reading. Reading is a universal skill that connects subjects
and is relevant across the curriculum. It's hard to follow a written set of instructions in art
or do a word problem later in
math without strong reading
skills after all! With your help and
support. Through activities like
book tasting and talking and
exploring a wide variety of
genres, as well as both fiction
and non-fiction I’ve no doubt
that together we can make your
child a strong reader!

The 5 key components to learning to read!

1. Phonemic awareness: Phonemic awareness is the relationship between the
sounds heard when spoken and the letters of the alphabet. It is an oral skill

2. Phonics: Phonics involve print and sound and the relationship between the sounds
of oral speech and the spelling patterns of written language.

3. Vocabulary: Vocabulary is the ability to store information about meanings and

pronunciations of words needed to understand content.

4. Fluency: The ability to read with accuracy, expression, appropriate rate and
comprehension.

5. Comprehension: Comprehension is a combination of factors such as vocabulary,

motivation and background knowledge. It involves predicting, visualizing,
connecting, questioning and summarizing to think about and understand what you
are reading.
So what parts are we
focusing on?

For our purposes, what we

need to really look at are the
first two, Phonemic
awareness and Phonics.
These two together make up
what is known as decoding
the process of sounding out
and interpreting new words.
In this process students act
as detectives to find the
patterns behind words and
through strategies such as
word creation and reading
alphabet books their skills at decoding improve. In the new curriculum created by the
Alberta government these five components are explicitly in the organizing ideas.

What kinds of reading are there?

There are two main kinds of reading, Efferent and Aesthetic reading and we will be using
both in the class. Efferent reading has absorbing new information as the primary purpose,
the focus is on learning about the world and seeing the interrelationships between pieces
of information.

Aesthetic reading is done for the enjoyment of the reader and the purpose is simply to
enjoy the text and they primarily concentrate on the feelings and images evoked by the
text.
Comprehension

No matter what kind of reading we are doing, what matters most for the success of our
students is what the reader brings to the text in prior knowledge and interest as well as
what the teacher does to help students be ready to read! To this end there are five
strategies to focus on when it comes to comprehension.

1. Activating Background knowledge to help students connect what they already

know to what they don’t know.

2. Questioning: Getting students to ask questions about their reading before and
during their reading so that they can more fully understand the text and its purpose.

3. Analyzing text structure: Encourages readers to think about how the text is
organized and how the key ideas within the text are interrelated. For example,
phrases that indicate a sequence of events or a descriptive list of information.

4. Creating mental images: Having a visual image of the structure of the text is a
key component in analyzing the text structure and thus knowing what the where the
text is going and thus comprehension.

5. Summarizing: Being able to summarize the main idea of the text in a concise
sentence while discarding redundant information.

A selection of books and how to support your child's reading!

Over the year we will be looking at a variety of books in different genres, below is a list of
some of them and a brief synopsis of what the book is about and what you can expect
your child to learn from it.

Genre: Picture book

A classic children's book that has been around for ages! It features
funny illustrations and an engaging rhyme scheme. Students will be
able to pick up how words create patterns and increase their
phonemic awareness.
 Genre: Picture book
A book about a tiger that is told he is the beast because of his
whiskers, stripes and tail. In this book students will learn descriptive
words as well as how to compare two things.

Genre: Alphabet book.

A book that will teach students the basics of the alphabet all while
offering them beautiful pictures of Alberta landscapes and
interesting extra information on a variety of subjects.

What do we do in the classroom that you can also do at home?

1. Read with them! The best thing that you can do to help your child is to read with
them and support their own interest in reading no matter the genre or level!
2. Read yourself! By modelling reading to your child you increase the chance that
they might just pick up a book themself
3. Keep a vocabulary journal! By keeping track of new vocabulary you can have a
stockpile of words that your child can reference in the future. On their next day at
school we can also add any words to our word wall for the whole class!
4. Draw pictures to summarize a story. Drawing pictures of the story they just read
helps students to create a mental image and summarize the story, two important
steps of the reading process!
5. Help them create their own story: Whether it is a few sentences or a story told
through pictures, by creating their own story they become more familiar with
conventional story structure and writing mechanics.