QUALITY STORYTENTS

A resource for family, early childhood and community literacy workers

Reading To

Reading to children can be an enjoyable way to pass time. It is also a good way to:

• help them expand their vocabulary
• help them become familiar with language structures and grammar
• help them learn more about books and printed text.

We agree that “reading to children... models both the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of reading…. Children... need to see the purpose in reading. If you believe you learn to read by reading, you must learn to want to read ” (Depree & Iverson, 1994, p. 31).

In the tent, children choose which book they want to hear. However, we make sure the tent is filled with books workers and children find easy and enjoyable to read. Other ways workers read the same books many times over without boredom or impatience include:

• using dramatic or comic voices
• integrating the names of children
• integrating locations familiar to children
• transforming a prose text into a song or play.

We do not require children to sit still or silently while we read. This would be disconnecting and would hurt our relationship with the children. If children choose a book that is too long for one sitting, we negotiate: “I’ll read you one chapter of that today. Then you can borrow it, or we can save it and read another chapter next time.”