Page 136 - Reading Nest - The Supportive Literacy Environment Handbook

Some ideas and guidelines for the inclusion of children with little reading experience
and interest in reading in the activities of a reading nest

• Plan your activities at different levels enabling attractive engagement for all children.
• Engage all senses:

• Read and explain, children with low language and speaking skills might not know
the meaning of the words. Explain, elaborate, open the meaning of words which

are unfamiliar. For instance: “The room grew dark.” add an explanation: “The
room grew dark and they could not see well”.

• Read and show, point out and indicate, move a hand, picture or toy for attracting

attention. Make sure that children can see that item well enough and sufficiently
long. If pictures change very quickly they are difficult if not impossible to

perceive.

• Show and allow touching and playing with real items related to the story. Children
with special needs also benefit from motion-related opportunities. Handling real

objects is useful and helps to understand the story being listened to. For instance
when listening to a cooking story, wearing an apron and holding a ladle specifies

the role and facilitates understanding it, should it not be clear by listening only.
• Children with reading or speech difficulty can achieve more when working in a group

as opposed to doing the same activity alone. Allow children in pairs or as a group to

say something, read and answer questions. This way a child with little skills also feels
that they have done something splendid with the others, and their participation

mattered to everybody.
• Divide children into groups, change groups regularly. Children of similar level could

work in a group one day, on another occasion children in a group should be of different
levels. This way you can avoid low-level children consistently clustering together, and

children with little skills can experience that they are able to achieve high results.

• An adult should sit somewhere near the reading nest to quickly respond if necessary.
Giving hints and working with the child (using their hand to show, move or write) are

efficient methods for “keeping the child on track”. Together you can count scores on

a dice, count steps on a board game while holding child’s hand and the game piece,
place domino tiles etc.