Workshop Combines Family and School Skills

At a night to share a favorite book and cozy blanket with the family had an educational aim for the school’s third graders.

The students and their parents spent part of the evening reading and analyzing their favorite stories, during the school’s second Reading is Thinking workshop. The workshop is designed to help the students’ reading comprehension skills.

 “We discovered that, although students were reading fluently, there were not always taking the time to understand what they were reading,” Kitty Ward, the school’s writing specialist, said. “... We wanted to promote the idea to families that even thought their children can read chapter books, they still needed support in understanding the concepts and the deeper thinking behind the reading.”

It’s the second consecutive year the school’s held the night, after hosting its first in 2010-11. According to Ward, the teachers found that the thought process for reading comprehension comes to adults naturally, but it’s often hard for parents to explain to their children. It led the school’s third grade teachers to create a night where the teachers could share comprehension strategies with parents and students.

The program also furthers the connection between home-life and school-life, Ward said.

“We wanted to send a message to students that reading and writing are part of our every day life and not just something that occurs in school,” she said. “We wanted to give parents the ‘language’ of reading comprehension as they support their children at home, and we wanted to give them another activity that was low cost, low tech and fun for all.”

The positive feedback from parents prompted the staff to hold a second workshop during the spring, focused on writing, as well as a reading workshop for the school’s fourth-grade classes, Ward said.

There are several reasons families return to the program, including an opportunity to be part of the classroom experience, as well as the close-knit atmosphere.

“We think the parents seem to enjoy having the opportunity to actively participate in the event instead of just hearing a lecture or watching a performance,” Ward said. “This year we were able to use technology to display a video clip or an interactive story, while we continued to stress the main idea‑thinking about and talking about what is being read.”