Engaging Children in Reading

This week in class, we spent a great deal of time practicing ways that we can engage children while reading a story. One way to engage children is with the use of character puppets or bibs. During the story, children get to use these puppets or bibs to be the character and do what the character does. It gives the children a connection to the story as well as keeping them in tune with the book.

For example, these are "puppets" for the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle. Each puppet would be given to individual children and they might hold it up during their page or something along those lines. If there are not enough characters for every child in the class then they would read the story another time and different children would get to be the characters.

Another way to keep children engaged while reading a story is using a book with repetition or predictability. When a book is constantly a repeating a phrase, children will catch on and enjoy saying it with you. Children also like to guess what is going to happen next. These two strategies occur in the book A Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. This book incorporates counting and days of the week which children will be able to predict which number or day comes next. It also uses repetition of the phrase "...But he was still hungry"on each page. Children are able to join in with the reader when this phrase is read.

These strategies can be used with a variety of children's books in a classroom. I think they are beneficial and make children interested in reading. These are also not the only strategies that can be used either. There are a variety of strategies that can be used when reading a story to children.