Looking Back and Moving Forward

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on June 23, 2011. One of my favorite memories of sixth grade is of the half-hour or so after lunch time, when our teacher read aloud to us. For the most part, all the students were able to read for themselves, but this was different. This wasn’t work. This…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on June 13, 2011. From picture books we move into the exciting, vast realm of chapter books with our emerging readers. This post continues my series about reading aloud to emerging readers. As I have done in previous posts, I want to recommend not just the listing of suggested…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on June 8, 2011. As I said in my initial post on reading aloud to emerging readers, not only should being read aloud to still be an important part of an emerging reader’s life, but there is definitely still a place for picture books in the reading choices for…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on June 5, 2011. The ages of 5 to 8 years mark a time of great transition in a child’s life. Starting kindergarten and then “real” school, moving beyond the familiar (and even for a child who has been in daycare, school is going to be a different experience),…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on May 31, 2011 There is no perfect time to read a story to a little one … Any time is the perfect time to read a story to a little one. As I said in my first post about reading to the littlest ones, reading aloud can begin…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on May 26, 2011. As Emma Walton Hamilton points out in her book Raising Bookworms: Getting Kids Reading for Pleasure and Empowerment, it is never too early to begin reading to a child. Even before the baby is born, reading to him/her can be a way of bonding, of…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on May 21, 2011. In my previous post in this series, I talked about how to read rhyming-text picture books. In this post, I want to suggest a few books in which the rhyming text works (and one in which it doesn’t, in my opinion). Babies are aware of…

This was first posted on elizabethannewrites on May 19, 2011. When Julie Andrews’ Collection of Poems, Songs and Lullabies was released, I told my mother about it over the phone, and mentioned that there was a CD of Julie reading some of the poems. (Note: Emma reads some of the poems as well.) I remember…