Reading at Home - Claudia

No regrets about putting this cold January behind us…

We all know the importance of early reading – and the positive impact on kids who come to school having been read to by parents.  But our first-grade teacher Claudia Bielicki puts “her money where her mouth is” – she has developed a weekly communication format that offers encouragement and support to parents so they will foster not only reading but other literacy activities at home.   I have attached a couple screenshots of communication that Claudia has with her parents.  Bravo for all the thought and hard work and perseverance – I’m sure the parents who are picking up so many of her ideas are grateful; their kids are surely benefitted. 

I would really like to plug the importance of reading and encourage ways we can bring in reading support from home. Hats off to you Claudia - you are laying the ground work for how readers are nurtured – and how reading brings satisfaction, knowledge of what it means to be human, knowledge of content and how wide reading will help our students become authors of their writing pieces. My guess is that many of us struggled with writing college papers.  Would we have struggled as much if we were well read?  

Below are some quotes on the importance of reading from a posting on Austin Kleon’s website – for those of you who like clever and creative – check him out.

“You can’t be a good writer without being a devoted reader.”
—J.K. Rowling

“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
—Annie Proulx

“Read with the mind-set of a carpenter looking at trees.”
—Terry Pratchett

“Read, read, read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read!”
—William Faulkner

When I’m reading, I’m looking for something to steal. Readers ask me all the time the traditional question ‘Where do you get your ideas from?” I reply: ‘We are all having ideas all the time. But I’m on the lookout for them. You’re not.’”
—Philip Pullman

“If only you’d remember before you ever sit down to write that you’ve been a reader much longer than you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world [you] would most want to read…”
—J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction




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