Reading to Kids

There are a range of ways people read to kids, and I think it's good to have variety:

• Reading in an entertaining way, trying to make it as fun as possible for them. Voices etc.
• Leaving pauses for them to fill in words or phrases they've memorized or can guess.
• Stopping frequently to ask them questions about what's happening, asking about details of pictures, asking about counterfactuals.
• When reading a new book, ask them to guess what's happening next.
• Once they start learning to read, or at least learning letters, see if they can read little bits. Can you find any 'o's? Is this word 'foo' or 'bar'?

One thing I haven't heard people do or recommend, though, is reading really fast. [1] I stumbled into this one time when I was curious how fast Lily would let me read, but they seem to like it. It also seems like it ought to be good practice for them in pretty core skills.

I don't know how much their comprehension drops when I do this; I definitely make more mistakes and I suspect they miss some things. I could read novel stories and ask reading comprehension questions, but I suspect they'd be uncooperative.

[1] Timing it, it seems like about 1.7x what I'd normally do: example recording.

Comment via: google plus, facebook