Finding the Best Balance for your Advanced Reader: Broadening their Horizon
In this series, you have learned a lot about how to encourage and help your advanced reader grow and flourish with their reading skills. Books lists, eBooks, and a variety of tips have been presented. In one of those tips from the second post in this series on books lists, I encouraged you to help your reader to expand their horizons by trying to
Advanced Readers: Best Book Lists
One of the ways to help your advanced reader choose books that are appropriate for their age and level is to conduct research of books lists online. There are many great resources geared toward advanced readers to provide books that are both challenging and rewarding. By using best book lists for advanced readers, you can find books that motivate your children. If you do
Poetry: Act Out Poems
Poetry is a writing form that easily lends itself to creative expression. Poets use poetry to give us a vivid mental picture of whatever topic they choose to write about. One fun activity to do with poetry is to let your children act out the poems that they read. Obviously not every poem will work for this, but there are many poems that are
Poetry: Poetic Structure
When starting any study of poetry, it is important to understand poetic structure. There are several features that are common to most poems that children should be aware of. Poetic Structure Definitions Line: A line is one row of words in poetry. Lines do not necessarily need to be complete sentences. Stanza: A stanza is a group of lines together separated by a space.
Poetry: Focusing on Feeling
One of the amazing things about poetry is how it allows the author to express his feelings in an interesting and descriptive way. When teaching your children about poetry, try to help them see how the author expresses himself in the poetry. Read for Feeling Have your child read the poem silently to himself and then out loud to you. Ask your child how
Poetry: Painting a Picture
Poetry can be described as using words to paint a picture for the reader. Poets try to choose vivid words so that we as readers can see a picture in our minds. Children can relate to some poems by painting the picture that the poem puts into their minds. Colorful Poems for Pictures The best poems for painting pictures with are the ones that
Poetry: Finding Figurative Language
Previous posts have talked about ways to help your children recognize and identify figurative language in stories. Because poetry has to paint a picture or share a feeling in a small number of words, poems are often full of figurative language. This makes poetry a great opportunity to further your children’s study of the types of figurative language. There are six main types of
Poetry: Reading Out Loud
Poetry has a lyrical beautiful sound to it when it is read out loud. Your child may love reading poetry out loud without any special strategies, but just in case they don’t, here are some ways that you can make reading poetry more fun. Hold a Poetry Reading Tell your children that they are going to put on a poetry reading for you as
Personification – Figurative Language
So far in our series on figurative language, we have discussed alliteration and the difference between similes and metaphors. Remember figurative language is a descriptive way of saying things that adds variety to writing. Personification Personification gives human characteristics to non-human objects. This allows the author to bring an inanimate object to life and describe it in new ways. For example, you could describe
Poetry – Children’s Literature Genres
Children’s Literature Genres: Poetry When you think of topics most children enjoy reading, poetry may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Most children do like to read poetry though. Because of the rhythms and lyrical nature of poetry, it is especially fun to read out loud. Poetry Characteristics Because there are many different types of poetry, its characteristics vary between poems.