A casual chat in the letter: How to teach reading lessons to first-grade children with different literacy levels

   
For first graders, if you have 30 min­utes a day for read­ing activ­i­ties, you can divide it into two parts:
   
Part 1: Read aloud one or two books to the chil­dren, usu­al­ly pic­ture books. If the chil­dren have already devel­oped a good habit, you can grad­u­al­ly read longer works.
   
When read­ing aloud to chil­dren, you can also add a lit­tle intro­duc­tion and inter­ac­tion time, but it doesn’t have to be too long. Just adjust it appro­pri­ate­ly to keep the children’s atten­tion.
   
Part 2: Con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing time. This should be about 10–15 min­utes. It should not be too long at the begin­ning, and 10 min­utes may be enough at the begin­ning.
   
Before the start of the sus­tained silent read­ing ses­sion, allow about two min­utes for prepa­ra­tion. Have the chil­dren choose two or three books—any book is fine, as long as it’s their favorite. Then, sit down and read togeth­er as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble, each read­ing their own book. It’s rec­om­mend­ed not to get up to switch books mid-ses­sion (so prepa­ra­tion time is cru­cial). The teacher’s role is cru­cial at this point. They should each choose a book they enjoy and qui­et­ly read their own. The teacher should not be busy with oth­er tasks or sole­ly main­tain order. If a child seems reluc­tant to read, visu­al reminders or qui­et reminders are suf­fi­cient. Even naps are per­mit­ted, as long as they don’t dis­turb oth­ers.
   
The above method, the first part of read­ing aloud, can also be called “dynam­ic read­ing”, so that all chil­dren can par­tic­i­pate in read­ing; the sec­ond part of con­tin­u­ous silent read­ing is main­ly to cul­ti­vate habits. The teacher is the first mod­el, and the chil­dren with good foun­da­tion are the sec­ond and third mod­els… As long as these mod­els can play a good lead­ing role, the lat­er chil­dren will be able to catch up quick­ly and grad­u­al­ly become mod­els them­selves.
   
Chil­dren in first grade are gen­er­al­ly in the “learn­ing how to read” stage. Nor­mal­ly, by the mid­dle and upper grades, they’ll progress to the “learn­ing through read­ing” stage. So how do chil­dren ini­tial­ly learn to read? The key prin­ci­ples are: imi­ta­tion and prac­tice. Read­ing aloud and sus­tained silent read­ing both pro­vide exam­ples for chil­dren to imi­tate. Sus­tained silent read­ing, in turn, is prac­tice.
   
If you think of read­ing as a skill, it can be com­pared to dri­ving. Peo­ple learn­ing to dri­ve don’t actu­al­ly need to under­stand all the prin­ci­ples of how a car works, nor do they need to be famil­iar with all the parts of a car. They just need to prac­tice reg­u­lar­ly and have a good teacher to guide them. Only those with spe­cial inter­ests will study the prin­ci­ples of cars. The same is true for read­ing. Unless you have a spe­cial inter­est in lin­guis­tics, most peo­ple don’t need to do spe­cial research on words, phras­es, or sen­tences. As long as you have a good teacher to guide you reg­u­lar­ly and prac­tice hap­pi­ly, you will learn quick­ly. Once you like read­ing and have learned how to read, you can look back at those words, phras­es, and sen­tences and you will under­stand every­thing you need to under­stand. ^_^
   
So, what should we do dur­ing a par­ent-teacher con­fer­ence? Most impor­tant­ly, we ask par­ents to read to and with their chil­dren every day. For exam­ple, there’s a man named Ajia in Bei­jing whose daugh­ter is in fifth grade, and he still reads to her every day. This is both joy­ful and high­ly effec­tive. It’s more eco­nom­i­cal, has­sle-free, and more effec­tive than any extracur­ric­u­lar class. O(∩_∩)O Haha~
   
If the fam­i­ly has the con­di­tions, that is, both par­ents are will­ing to read with their chil­dren, then it is rec­om­mend­ed to set aside some time every day for the whole fam­i­ly to read silent­ly togeth­er. As long as you per­sist, the effect will be amaz­ing.
   
Regard­ing the rela­tion­ship between lit­er­a­cy and read­ing, the for­mer Sovi­et edu­ca­tor Sukhom­lin­sky has a pas­sage that I often review and share with you for your ref­er­ence. In his “Advice to Teach­ers,” he wrote:
   
“I strive to make a word, for chil­dren, not mere­ly a sym­bol for a thing, an object, or a phe­nom­e­non, but one imbued with emo­tion­al color—with its own fra­grant aro­ma and rich, vibrant hues. It’s impor­tant to make chil­dren lis­ten to words as they would to a beau­ti­ful melody, so that the beau­ty of the word and the beau­ty of the part of the world it reflects can arouse their inter­est in the lit­tle pic­tures that express the music of human language—the lit­er­al words. If a child has­n’t yet sensed the fra­grance of the word and seen its vibrant, vibrant hues, then lit­er­a­cy instruc­tion should­n’t begin. If a teacher insists on doing so, he or she is con­demn­ing the child to a dif­fi­cult path. (The child will even­tu­al­ly over­come these dif­fi­cul­ties, but at a great cost!)”
 
Argen­tine Primera División, Novem­ber 12, 2010, morn­ing in Bei­jing
 
 

 
Attached is a frag­ment of the let­ter:
 
    
I’ve been work­ing with teach­ers late­ly to explore ways to guide chil­dren’s read­ing. My first-grade child has been in school for over two months now. Since the begin­ning of the school year in Sep­tem­ber, we’ve estab­lished a fixed read­ing time from 12:50 PM to 1:20 PM each day to encour­age them to read. How­ev­er, many teach­ers have recent­ly expressed con­cerns and asked me for help in find­ing solu­tions. I’ve been pon­der­ing this for a long time but haven’t found a suit­able solu­tion, so I’d like to ask for your advice!

    
First graders have only been in school for a short time. Due to vary­ing preschool expe­ri­ences and fam­i­ly read­ing envi­ron­ments, their lit­er­a­cy lev­els vary sig­nif­i­cant­ly, mak­ing it chal­leng­ing to pro­vide read­ing instruc­tion all at once. How can we rec­om­mend dif­fer­ent books based on chil­dren’s lit­er­a­cy lev­els? Fur­ther­more, for chil­dren who rarely read and have lit­tle inter­est in read­ing, how can we stim­u­late their inter­est in read­ing?

    
2. Is it appro­pri­ate for first graders to read the same book togeth­er? If so, which book should they choose to read first?
    
3. We are plan­ning to hold a par­ent-teacher con­fer­ence on read­ing for all first-grade par­ents. Do you have any sug­ges­tions? For exam­ple, how should we rec­om­mend good books to par­ents? What kind of books should par­ents read to guide their chil­dren’s read­ing?