The O.W.L Method for Book Reading a With Your Child

Promoting your child’s early literacy is so important to their future academic success. Recent studies have shown that kids who start school with a higher level of early literacy skills are most likely to achieve greater academic success. Parents are the child’s first teachers in life and that is why it is very crucial for them to take part in helping them learn how to read.

 

The best way to achieve this is through interactive book reading. This is an active form of reading where you ask the child to do something and not always follow the words in the book. It is more like having a conversation with them. There is nothing really hard about it. All you need to do is get a children’s book that your kid loves and spend some time with them going through it.

 

It is important for parents to understand that children learn best by having fun and enjoyable conversations with the most important people in their lives, and not by being taught.
Having conversations with your child while reading enables you to see and predict their growth in several ways, including:

 

1. Understanding of what they have read. When a child is able to listen to and comprehend whatever read, you can be satisfied that they can read and compose stories on their own.

 

 

2. Language skills. By making book reading a time for conversations, you will be able to gauge the number of words they know and can pronounce correctly. You will also be able to correct them whenever they go wrong and elaborate whenever they do not understand. The more words your child knows, the easier it is for them to learn new words and comprehend the meaning of various stories they read.

 

 

3. Conversational abilities. The ability of your child to understand and use words correctly is directly related to the development in their literacy levels. If your child has great conversational skills, you can rest assured that they will be able to understand what they read later on in life.

 

Interactive book reading is highly beneficial to your child’s growth and development. Besides being a fun and enjoyable way of spending time with their parents away from their busy schedules, it can benefit them in the following ways:

 

1. They become more engaged when they play an active role in the book reading. They also get to share with their parents about what they love doing. When a child talks about a topic that has captured their interest in books, their language and literacy skills develop at a faster rate.

 

2. They can connect the new information they learn to what they already know.

 

3. They become introduced to the building blocks of literacy such as conversation, vocabulary and the structure of the story.

 

4. They are exposed to new ideas and language that they would not have come across in everyday conversations.
Hanen dot Org has developed some strategies that will be useful in achieving an interactive book reading session. This is known as the OWL method: Observe, Wait and Listen.

 

This is quite an effective strategy as it enables you to know what interests your child, letting him/her initiate the interaction and makes them feel like you are actually hearing them out.

 

i. When observing, pay close attention to what your child reacts to and what his/her interests are.

 

ii. When waiting, do not speak but look at your child expectantly for them to know that you are anticipating something.

 

iii. And finally, listen carefully to whatever your child is telling you.

 

It is also important to know when to OWL. Here are a few pointers:

 

i. Before or after turning a page.

 

ii. When something exciting happens in the book.

 

iii. After commenting on a picture or something in the story.

 

iv. After asking a question.

 

During interactive book reading, it is important to let your child take the lead. When they say something to you, make sure you respond immediately by saying something that relates to what they have said or done. Your response should also be warm and enthusiastic to let them know that you are really interested in whatever they have said. Let them set the pace of the reading exercise and spend more time on pages they like.

 

By doing all this, you will definitely see your child’s literacy skills develop in a drastic way.