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Read With Me! NEW RESOURCE!
A great resource for early reading materials!!!
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Read With ME! was funded through a grant from our districts educational foundation. The inspiration for writing the grant was initiated through our building literacy team as a strategy to increase our children’s pre-reading and reading skills along with increasing out building reading scores on the PSSA assessments.
Grade Levels: All Fredericksburg K-2 student and parents
Number of students affected by the Grant: 120 potential students We presented this workshop for 20 parents, reaching approximately 28 children.
1. Statement of need: This year the Fredericksburg Elementary Literacy Team was focusing on improving early literacy skills in grades K-2. As an extension of the building level literacy team, the reading specialist and the speech therapist would like to initiate and implement training sessions for parents. Read With Me! is a powerful and effective tool for helping parents and educators become active participants in the development of children’s most fundamental skills—talking and reading. Read With Me! provides children with a strong foundation for literacy by helping them develop these early reading skills and reading competencies related to the development of language through quality interaction with adults. Often children are developing a “reading is work” mentality. This program, written by Shari Robertson and Helen Davig, teaches children the pure enjoyment of reading before teaching them isolated skills necessary to read. A desire to read is not born, rather “it is planted there by parents and teachers who work at it” (J. Trelease, 1989).
2. Principal Consultation regarding funding: During a recent meeting with Mr. Kenneth Weaver, building principal concerning this application, he indicated that there is no money available in the general fund budget to support this type of initiative. Mr. Weaver encouraged us to seek funds elsewhere.
Overall Goal of Grant: The primary goal for this grant is to give parents “tools” they need to implement good literacy practices at home with their children while assisting in developing life long readers. This program will train parents in six strategies to help young children become more fully engaged in the reading experience. Reading can be FUN and STRESS-FREE!
Objectives: · To facilitate an understanding of the importance of reading together on the language and literacy development of young children. · To provide program participants with methods to promote active child participation during reading interactions in the home environment. · To introduce participants to a wide variety of children’s literature that supports the development of critical language and literacy skills.
Activities: Each 1 ˝ hour session will be devoted to isolated strategy instruction that parents can utilize while enjoying books at home with their young readers. The session will be interactive and allow for parents to practice reading strategies to help their Northern Lebanon child. Participants will receive books to use and practice the new strategy taught during the session. The final session will be a joint session between parents and children while celebrating the enjoyment of using the strategies that were introduced. Session 1: Echo and Paired Reading Strategies Session 2: Questioning and Predicting Strategies Session 3: Wordless Books and Readers Theater Session 4: Putting it all together with pizza and books!
Number of Students Participating: Approximately 120 Fredericksburg student will be invited, grades K-2.
Time Constraints or Deadlines: It would be helpful if funding were available as soon as possible to purchase necessary materials for the four sessions.
Culminating Activity Night: Read With Me! Celebration night was a culminating activity night the reading specialist and I choose to close our workshop. We invited the parents to bring along their children, a food item of their choice, and a reader’s theatre idea to share. We began with dinner; pizza, drinks and desserts. After dinner, we all met to share any questions, concerns, collect evaluations and to do a group reader’s theatre activity. The remaining time we divided the families into small groups to share their reader’s theatre idea. This was a great success. The children enjoyed listening to the other stories and participating in the reader’s theatre ideas.
Project Budget: Description Budgeted $ Actual Cost
Instructional/Parent Education Materials $400 $353.47 · Postage for invitations (did not need) · Training video for parents (170.00 -- · Handouts for parents (school provided copies) · Big Books for whole group instruction (6 @ 24.95) (They will remain in library circulation)
Food $125 Cut from Grant proposal by donating foundation Parent teacher group offered to fund refreshments · Refreshments for three sessions · Culminating pizza celebration · Paper products
Honorarium for Childcare $120 $40 each plus Volunteer students from HS child development class plus Parent- · 2-4 high school students per session Teacher Organization donated 20$ gift card for local book store.
Books for Children $355 $441.53 · Trade book copy of big book used for Instruction to be given to parents to take home and practice newly learned strategy. Ordered 24 copies of 6 books.
Total: $1000 $875.00
Culminating Activity Night: Read With Me! celebration night was a culminating activity night the reading specialist and I choose to close our workshop. We invited the parents to bring along their children, a food item of their choice, and a reader’s theatre idea to share. We began with dinner; pizza, drinks and desserts. After dinner, we all met to share any questions, concerns, collect evaluations and to do a group reader’s theatre activity. The remaining time we divided the families into small groups to share their reader’s theatre idea. This was a great success. The children enjoyed listening to the other stories and participating in the reader’s theatre ideas.
Feedback from parents: We received 13 evaluation forms. All 13 evaluations provided us with positive comments about the workshop and the reading strategies taught. Some of the comments were as follows:
How did the workshop change reading with your child: “They have become more a part of the reading, not just an audience.” “Our reading is now more interactive.” “My children wanted to help me do my homework” “I now try to be more expressive and interactive with the book instead of ‘just reading’ it.” “We now take picture walks, echo read and pair read. They want to read even more than they did before the workshop.” “My children saw how important reading is to us as parents.” “It has shown me many different ways to make reading stories more interesting for him.” “I have learned that by doing the techniques it makes our reading together a lot more fun and relaxing.” “My child loves to use prediction.” “It showed my new techniques to make reading seem easier for my child. He feels better about reading and looks like he is more comfortable reading.” “I learned how to make our reading time together more enjoyable for both of my children.” “Questioning and predicting. My daughter seemed to be more interested in what was to come on the following pages.” “It gave us new concepts to try with our children. It alerted them to correlate the pictures with the words. They are now “reading” books to each other. It also brought wordless books to our attention.”
What aspect of the workshop was most beneficial?: “Being reminded to interact with them more, not just read to them.” “Learning to let my child participate in reading not just having them sit and listen.” “There are different was of ‘reading’ a book which makes it fun and stress free for all.” “Offer child predicting, allowing the child to share their feelings and picture details before reading the story. It opened my mind to wordless books.” “Questioning and predicting. The echo reading for my younger child.” “The best thing was showing us how to create the stress free and fun environment for my son to read in.” “Listening to other parents and learning from what they say and do with their children. The books that were provided were also beneficial.” “Reminding parents that it is such a big deal to be patient and encouraging to our children when they read.” “All of it! I now find myself categorizing books-whether it can be used for echo vs paired reading. The suggested books lists were great!”
“I would have never thought to have the kids use their own imagination and tell their own story.” “I enjoyed all the workshops and the other ideas the parents shared.”
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Send mail to readwmec@readwme.com with
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