by Steven Engelfried<\/p>\n
A couple weeks ago I pulled out one of my all-time favorite picture books and shared it with a group: \u00a0<\/span>Fortunately <\/em>by Remy Charlip.\u00a0 <\/span>They seemed to enjoy it.\u00a0 <\/span>They laughed at the right places, had some good guesses when asked \u201cwhat unfortunate thing do you think he\u2019ll find in the water?\u201d\u009d (\u201cSharks?\u00a0 <\/span>Pirates?\u00a0 <\/span>Oil Spill?\u201d\u009d)\u00a0 <\/span>And when Ned finally arrived at his own surprise birthday party at the end, they seemed as satisfied as most kids are every time I read the book.\u00a0 <\/span>The difference, though, is that this was an audience of grown ups. <\/font><\/p>\n One of my favorite tasks of my job in the Early Childhood Outreach department is doing educational presentations for parents.\u00a0 <\/span>When a Head Start or a childcare center has a Parent Night (or Parent Day, or Parent whenever), we do our best to share information about why it\u2019s so important to read to kids and offer tips and examples on how to make the experience especially fun and effective.\u00a0 <\/span>So I talk some about early literacy skills and child brain development and share some impressive statistics.\u00a0 <\/span>And these can all be pretty powerful.\u00a0 <\/span>But the part when I read a book is the most fun, and it some ways it\u2019s every bit as important as the other stuff.<\/font><\/p>\n I\u2019m lucky to work with Nell Colburn, a fabulous librarian, and she\u2019s the one who really showed me how much powerful content you can get from reading a book to the parents.\u00a0 <\/span>Based on observing her, I start by encouraging the parents to pretend they\u2019re preschoolers while they listen.\u00a0 <\/span>Some are a bit reluctant, some don\u2019t play along at all, and some really get into it.\u00a0 <\/span>All responses are okay.\u00a0 <\/span>But I also tell them, as Nell does, to observe with a critical eye at the same time, noticing details about how I share the book with them.\u00a0 <\/span>So when the book is finished, we talk about what they noticed, and they almost always catch everything:\u00a0 <\/span>Asking questions; talking about the words and pictures; showing enthusiasm; being a bit silly\u2026.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s all very relaxed and fun.\u00a0 <\/span>Partly because the best children\u2019s books really work for all ages.\u00a0 <\/span>Also, it\u2019s an unexpected treat for many grownups to just sit and listen to a story, even one that\u2019s meant for kids.\u00a0 <\/span>Few of us get the chance to do that often enough.\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n But beyond the fun, though, that experience sets the stage for the information that follows.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s fine to say that talking about pictures helps develop vocabulary, but when you then remind them that many of their kids might not know the words \u201cpitchfork,\u201d\u009d \u201cparachute,\u201d\u009d or \u201cfortunate,\u201d\u009d and show how those can lead to conversations, things really start to click.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ll ask how many of them could probably retell most of that story by memory after just one listen, then relate that to the importance of narrative skills.\u00a0 <\/span>We talk about how the experience might be different for kids if they\u2019re hearing the story a second, or third, or tenth time, and what they learn through that repetition.<\/font><\/p>\n I’ve always felt more comfortable presenting to kids, rather than adults, and\u00a0probably always will.\u00a0\u00a0And I admit that assuming the role of “presenter- of-early-literacy-research-to-parents” took me way out\u00a0of my comfort zone for a while.\u00a0 But I think I’m okay with parent presentations now, and the reason should have been obvious from the start:\u00a0 when in doubt, whatever the audience, read a funny story.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Steven Engelfried A couple weeks ago I pulled out one of my all-time favorite picture books and shared it with a group: \u00a0Fortunately by Remy Charlip.\u00a0 They seemed to enjoy it.\u00a0 They laughed at the right places, had some good guesses when asked \u201cwhat unfortunate thing do you think he\u2019ll find in the water?\u201d\u009d (\u201cSharks?\u00a0 Pirates?\u00a0 Oil Spill?\u201d\u009d)\u00a0 And when Ned finally arrived at his own surprise birthday party at the end, they seemed as satisfied as most kids are every time I read the book.\u00a0 The difference, though, is that this was an audience of grown ups. One of my favorite tasks of my job in the Early Childhood Outreach department is doing educational presentations for parents.\u00a0 When a Head Start or a childcare center has a Parent Night (or Parent Day, or Parent whenever), we do our best to share information about why it\u2019s so important to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[38,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming-ideas","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}