A Lifetime Reading Habit

This week, as we face both the hope of spring and the likelihood of getting stuck at home yet again, thanks to a late winter snowstorm, I offer you some web resources to help you nurture your children’s curiosity and pleasure in reading.

What is the main goal of reading at home? To develop in each child the habit of reading at home!  Reading should be a pleasurable daily experience, not a war of wills.  It should sometimes feel like sweet solitude, and at other times, like a precious shared experience.  Daily reading is not the time to insist your child bone up on new vocabulary, to quiz him or her for recollection, or to stretch beyond a comfort zone.  Rather, this is a time for engaging in relaxed imagination. 

Setting aside even ten minutes for quiet reading time helps establish the habit.  All the better, by the way, if you take the same ten minutes to share the couch and enjoy some pleasure reading of your own.

How do you pick good books for your child, Books that will stimulate interest, are of literary value, and are just plain fun?

1. Ask your child’s teacher.  Your child’s teacher can give you the closest assessment of what level book your child can read independently, what level book s/he can read with adult assistance (called the “instructional level”), and what level book s/he can follow aurally when being read to.  At home, independent and shared reading should be much more of a pleasure than an effort, so please take the teacher’s recommendations seriously.  Striving far above a child’s comfort zone at home can lead to frustration and “flooding out,” which is when being overwhelmed looks just like being bored, both of which work against the goal of establishing a happy habit of daily reading. 
   Teachers use different methods of helping students learn to choose books for themselves.  Here’s one you can use at home. Ask your child to test whether a book they are interested in is at a “just right” level for them by applying the Five Finger Rule.  Have your child open a page of the book, and start reading, and counting times they stumble on their fingers.  If they stumble up to around three times, this may be a “just right” fit.  Five or more may be a stretch for independent reading – so if they are just dying to read that book, please help them through it.  While zero to one errors may signal a “too easy” read, reading very easy books provides a student opportunities to build confidence and fluency, as long as the child is enjoying the experience and is not bored.   
2. Look for award winners.  Many organizations present annual awards for extraordinary children’s books. While the Newberry and Caldecott Medals are the best known of the bunch, many organizations put out annual “Best of” lists worth perusing.  Don’t forget to look at past years’ lists as well – some stellar books have won their awards in the past! Here’s a gateway site from which you can start exploring: http://www.readingrockets.org/books/awardwinners .  
3. Don’t forget about graphic novels and comics, particularly for reluctant readers.  Reading is reading: and your job at home is to encourage joyful and frequent reading.  Here are a few resources: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5038.Best_Graphic_Novels_for_Children (This is reader generated); from School Library Journal, http://www.slj.com/2011/07/collection-development/comic-relief-thirty-nine-graphic-novels-that-kids-cant-resist/ ; and from the American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/alsc/graphicnovels2013.  

Remember, the goal of reading at home is most directly to build a lifelong habit of reading at home! Keep it relaxed, model it yourself, and include your child in the selection process.

One Community, Many Denominations

Tomorrow afternoon through Saturday night, one teenaged Hebrew Academy alumnus and I will be co-chaperoning the Middle School Shabbaton.

We are not retreating to a camp or staying in sleeping bags at school. Quite the opposite, we are advancing into the area’s densest Jewish neighborhood, where many of our students live. Taking up residence in three families’ homes, we will be praying in one Orthodox and two Conservative synagogues, eating Shabbat meals in two families’ houses and at one shul, studying with five rabbis and a cantor, and, weather permitting, enjoying free time by the neighborhood pond, a regular gathering place for Albany’s Jews of all ages and denominations.

The Capital Region Jewish community is very special, in that it is both big enough to support several large synagogues within blocks of each other, and small enough so that Jews behave as one close-knit, Jewish community. People commonly meet members of various shuls at each other’s communal dinners and events. All of Albany’s congregations walk to Buckingham Pond for the Taschlich ceremony and festivities on Rosh Hashanah. The local Board of Rabbis includes clergy ordained in more than six different rabbinical seminaries.  

At Hebrew Academy, students study, play, and pray with Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Renewal, Reconstructionist, Traditional, and secular classmates. Their families’ varied modes of Jewish engagement and observance are respected by the teachers and through the curriculum. Such diversity often complicates school policies. Yet, with families proud of being part of this community of difference, Hebrew Academy gratefully works through those complications to craft an educational environment that affirms each  family’s choices.

These Middle School students are excited to meander from shul to shul together this Shabbat, learning about the different movements while strengthening their connections with each other as members of one Jewish community.  

Shabbat shalom!

Q: How does kashrut work at Hebrew Academy?

A: Hot lunches and all other cooked meals and snacks prepared in the school’s kitchen are subject to supervision by the Va’ad Hakashrut of the Capital District. Several staff members serve as agents of the Va’ad, supervising daily operations such as checking packaged foods for hecshers (seals of various kosher certification-granting organizations) acceptable to the Va’ad, and attending to all kashrut requirements. Children may bring snacks and meals from home that are dairy or pareve (neither milk nor meat), and because students’ home kashrut standards vary, no sharing of food is permitted.