Learning Coach Information about Bison Reading

Dear OVCA Families:

This semester we are launching a reading initiative to encourage your students to engage in regular reading practice. The goal of the initiative is to get students reading independently with books that they enjoy, so students should choose books that interests them and that they will be motivated to read daily.

The Bison Reading site was created to bring all the free reading resources together in one place for students to be able to have easy access to these free online resources. Please encourage your student to use these online libraries to read new and exciting books that interest them and to read daily. Of course, your local library is also a great place to go for books.

Your student can log books and minutes through the Bison Reading site in order to be entered in a monthly drawing for prizes. Please use the link on the Bison Reading site each week to let us know what you have read!

Bison Reading: https://hwyers.wixsite.com/bisonreading

There are several key components to reading comprehension including fluency (decoding and phonetics) and vocabulary.

Fluency:

First, students must be able to read the words on the page. If a student struggles to read, comprehension will be hard for that student, so this is an important first step. Learning coaches can help students build fluency by reading aloud with them. Even older students can benefit from taking turns reading a book with an adult or learning coach. In addition, there are several resources on the Bison Reading Website to help students and learning coach with this important skill.

Vocabulary:

Second, when students build vocabulary they will understand more of the words that they are reading and will have an easier time comprehending text. Therefore, learning new words is an important step in reading comprehension and there are several vocabulary sites and resources on the Bison Reading site to help students build vocabulary. However, please keep in mind that when students engage in reading practice that they will learn new words from the books they read. Please encourage them to ask you about the meanings of words that they don’t understand as they read new books that interest them.

Please reach out to your child’s teacher if you have any questions or need help finding a book at the appropriate level for you student.

Thank you,

Holly Wyers

hwyers@okvirtual.org