Help Me Get Ready To Read: The Practical Guide For Reading Aloud To Children During Their First Five Years

by Susan Marx, Barbara Kasok

HELP ME GET READY TO READ is an easy-to-follow guide for reading aloud effectively to children starting in infancy through the preschool years. Parents and grandparents, daycare providers, preschool staff, early childhood professionals, literacy volunteers, and librarians can use HELP ME GET READY TO READ to understand early literacy concepts and skills; choose good books to read aloud to young children; create a nurturing environment for reading aloud; and foster children's emotional, social, language, and cognitive development. In addition to creating positive connections to books and learning, HELP ME GET READY TO READ focuses on early literacy concepts and skills, such as listening and speaking, vocabulary, comprehension, phonological awareness, print concepts, letters and their sounds, and writing using both parenting strategies and reading strategies. It provides book-related activities that engage young children in dramatic play; rhymes fingerplays, and songs; and draw and write projects. Included in the practical guide are detailed lists of 275 quality books appropriate for reading aloud to children during their first five years. HELP ME GET READY TO READ can be used when reading aloud to one or more children at home or when reading aloud to groups of children in daycare, preschool, or library settings.

Genres: Parenting

172 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2010

About the author

Susan Marx is a parent educator, writer and editor of educational materials for students and teachers, and an elementary school teacher. Over the past 17 years, she has facilitated over 600 Families First positive parenting workshops for diverse groups of parents and professionals at homeless shelters, daycare centers, preschools, public and independent schools, worksites, and national early childhood conferences. Workshop topics include creating home-school partnerships, helping children succeed in school, understanding children's temperament, and getting children ready for kindergarten. She has appeared in parenting spots on Boston TV and cable networks, and has been interviewed by major newspapers and parenting magazines. As a writer and editor, Susan prepared materials for reading, social studies, spelling, and language arts textbooks and practice books for DC Heath, Silver Burdett Ginn, Macmillan, and Houghton Mifflin. In addition, she gave sales presentations to state textbook adoption committees. Susan also taught grades K through 5 in New York, California, and Massachusetts. She has three children and eight grandchildren. Barbara Kasok is a consulting teacher of reading and has done graduate work in reading at Boston University and Lesley College. Barbara taught in elementary school classrooms in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and in federally funded Title I reading programs (K-4) in Massachusetts. When she directed her own daycare program for children ages 1 to 3, reading aloud was an important part of each day. At Silver Burdett Ginn, a division of Simon and Schuster, Barbara was a project manager responsible for working with teachers, freelance writers, and reading specialists from Boston University, University of Colorado, and University of Virginia to develop national reading programs for K-8. Also, she worked as a project manager to develop, write, and edit manuscript for K-8 reading, language arts, math, and social studies materials for national publishers, such as Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, and Scholastic. These materials include reading lessons for teachers, reading practice books for children, decodable storybooks for beginning readers, and rhyme and poem books. Barbara has three children and two grandchildren. "

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great read-aloud suggestions for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, and a basic, user-friendly explanation of the concepts of early literacy. My only complaint is that the recommended activities provided for various books (though useful) are extremely repetitive. (For example, the “Letters and Their Sounds” activities for each of the six examples are the same. There’s no need to provide the same recommendations six separate times.)

[morninglightmama · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great simple informative text for parents and caregivers, along with a great list of resources, suggested picture books and connecting activities to do with children after reading together.