Children CAN Read: Building Relationships through Reading

Children CAN Read:  

Building Relationships Through Reading

by: Ashley Ewert

From the beginning of the school year we, as teachers, build relationships with students using a variety of models and strategies. Have you ever thought how you can build a relationship with a student over a simple book? We encourage parents to read to their children every night, we even assign reading homework to students to encourage reading outside the classroom. Parents who read bedtime storied to their children build relationships and take adventures through the stories they read each night. So, as teachers, let's take that same that same idea and build relationships and take adventures through stories we read to the students in the classroom. Great teaching practice involves encouragement at all levels of reading abilities. Giving students the confidence that they can read at any level will help build positive relationships with the students. Reading can be a powerful way to help build acceptance, understanding and social emotional needs. 

Ways  to Encourage Reading - 

Reading development can be similar to language development. When do children learn to communicate? Is their first form of communication crying or saying words? Reading development is very similar. Some believe that reading begins when children learn to read sentences in a book and others believe that reading begins when children point and read pictures in a book. There are so many modalities of reading that reading development can really begin with at a very young age. I have always encouraged my preschool students that they can read. They can read pictures in a book. They can read words and letters in a book. They can also read by re-telling the story after it has been read to them. Encouraging students that they can read gives them motivation and helps to establish and build relationships in the classroom between students and teachers. 

"A person is a person no matter how small" - Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!

Student & Teacher Reading Connections- 

Reading is often thought of as a self contained act. Meaning that many children read silently alone. This does not have to be the case. Teachers can build connections through reading when reading aloud or pulling a small reading groups. Reading in small groups allows opportunities to meet student's social emotional needs thus allowing teachers to build and make connections with students. I enjoy adding additional reading materials to my Language arts block during the holidays. When I have read holiday books as a whole group read aloud I often place the books in the classroom library for students to choose when they have a library center rotation. During the library center rotation I am sure to provide the students with staff support so they can have the opportunity to read with an adult individually or as a small group. reading can be fun. Reading can be adventurous. Reading can build connections, relationships, acceptance and foster social emotional needs. 

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." - A.A. Milne

"To teach is to touch a life forever." - Anonymous 

Ashley Ewert