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We Both Read | Treasure Bay
Scroll over image The We Both Read books are so highly effective because they engage both children and parents in reading—and make it easy for them to be successful. This shared experience reduces the frustrations of beginning and struggling readers—and makes reading fun! Children get to practice reading at their skill level and they also have the opportunity to relax and listen as the fluent reading of more complex text is modeled for them. The result is increased comprehension, fluency, and support for their decoding skills, along with increased enthusiasm for reading. Most schools provide sets of the books for classroom libraries, with teachers sending appropriate levels of books home on a lending basis. However, some schools provide these books to students and parents to help supplement or begin a home library. Plus, We Both Read has proven to be just as effective when used in the classroom for RTI programs, as well as for tutored-reading and buddy-reading programs. To see comments and reviews on the We Both Read series, please click here. Shop Now for Collections of the We Both Read Series Shop Now for Individual Titles of the We Both Read Series View Sample Books and Pages for the We Both Read Series Prices (before discount): Paperback (each): $5.99
Hardcover (each): $9.95 Sale Price: $6.99 Click here to see titles available in hardcover. To see individual titles in paperback, click here. Book Specifications: Trim size: 6.75” x 9” • 44 pages in full color • PB & HC Binding: Smyth Sewn • Hardcover Reinforced
“We Both Read books have been a great resource for my students with learning disabilities. . . . The students and I are surprised how well and how much they read when using your delightful books.” Marilyn Whiteaker, Kellybook Elementary, Kansas City, MO Winner of Numerous Awards!Highly Effective FormatDeveloped with reading education specialists, the We Both Read format has proven particularly effective with reluctant and struggling readers in igniting reading interest and accelerating reading development. The series includes books appropriate for emergent and beginning readers, as well as books for more advanced readers, who may still be struggling to read fluently. With its paired-reading format and the parent’s pages with text at about a 5th grade level, the We Both Read books provide content that generates significantly higher interest, making the books one of the best series for “high-interest low-level” reading. For most titles in this series, the child reads every other page in the book. The pages read by the child contain text written at a specific Guided Reading Level, ranging from A through O. However, the series also includes titles appropriate for pre-readers, including Pre-K students. These titles may be read completely by the parent, but still involve significant pre-reading activities and interaction between the parent and child. For example, books may involve the parent asking questions and then looking at the illustrations or photos with the child to help answer the questions. “Your books have helped many of our children to LOVE reading! Our parents are thrilled with the progress they see in their children’s reading, especially their comprehension and interest. Please keep the new books coming!!” Marguerite DeSanctis, Episcopal Academy, Devon, PA Award-Winning Writers and IllustratorsFeaturing both fiction and non-fiction titles, We Both Read is one of the most popular series of leveled readers used in schools with over six million copies now in print. “I purchased We Both Read books for my Title I Reading Program to send home as summer reads. I have never seen parents and kids so excited about books before!!” Susan Breitigan, Title I Reading Teacher, Arcadia Local Schools To see more reviews and comments on We Both Read, click here. Read-Along E-Books Many We Both Read books are now available in Read-Along E-Book editions to help support beginning and struggling readers. These Read-Along e-books have the option to play an audio recording of the book, and students can easily follow along in the e-book since words are highlighted in sync with the audio. Parent Presentations Download or stream three parent presentations on We Both Read, reading together, and phonics. These are perfect for family literacy nights or as an online resource for parents. Click here to view information on the presentations. Tip Sheet for Teachers and Parents With purchase of any set of We Both Read paperbacks or hardcovers (see page 7), you’ll receive a tip sheet for parents and teachers on Getting Started with We Both Read. To view and download the tip sheet, click here. Reading Comprehension Quizzes for the We Both Read Series Download comprehension quizzes for all the We Both Read titles from Level 1 through 3. Answer keys for teachers are included. Click here to view and download the quizzes. Parent and Family Engagement in Reading: Doing It Early, Effectively, and EasilyThis 30-minute presentation was given by the President of Treasure Bay at a National Title I Conference. |
The concept of the series is simple: each book is specially formatted for a parent and child to take turns reading aloud alternate pages. The parent’s pages feature higher-level text (at about a 5th-grade reading level), while the child’s pages feature text that matches the child’s reading level.
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The popularity of the series is assisted by its high quality of writing, illustration and photography. Writers include Dev Ross, best known for writing many of The Land Before Time movies, and Sindy McKay, Emmy award-winning writer for The Muppet Babies and the PBS series, Clifford, The Big Red Dog.
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Please consider sharing this video with parents and educators at your school. Here is a link to this video:Shop Now for Collections of the We Both Read Series
Shop Now for Individual Titles of the We Both Read Series
View Sample Books and Pages for the We Both Read Series
Why don't children always read in a reading family?
In a reading family, there are children who read, right? And let's replace reading with running. Running parents have running children. Of course, they will run if the daily runs of both parents are required, and the children take part in them, since there is no one to leave them with, and they run with mom and dad. But we have never seen anything like this.
And if they did, then this is a very rare, even unique case, because the running speed of parents is clearly not suitable for children, it is inconvenient to run with them, and parents rarely run together. You can mitigate the situation: every year parents participate in the "Running City", take their children with them, since participation in the action allows them to do this. But if we look at families that have been participating in this event for many years, we will notice that often the initiators of participation are not parents, but children. If there are several children in the family, then over time one is interested in participating independently, while the other becomes uninteresting. That is, everything flows, everything changes.
Of course, the way of life habitual for the family affects the child, his behavior, habits, but does not determine the character and abilities. Even the hobbies of children in the same family are different. And this seems completely normal to us - all people are different.
By the way, only one of the sons runs in our family. How did he develop this need for a family where no one had ever run?
Where, then, does the idea of reading come from as something that children necessarily copy from their parents? Why does this performance not apply to music, theatre, cinema, football, and more?
Finally, why isn't there a magical reading infection?
1. Reading unnoticed
If you can watch a movie together, then we read a book aloud much less often. More often we each read our own, secluded, quietly. How exactly a person reads, that is, perceives what he read, we do not see. And the child does not have the opportunity to see the parent reading in the toilet-transport-bed. To copy a seat with a book in an armchair... - yes, this is possible if the person reading makes you want to copy it. For example, Daniel Pennack writes about this - he began to read, copying his older brother. But my younger brother reads so much (even walking down the street, he can bury himself in an electronic book) that he can hardly become an example for his nephews - his behavior is rather strange than approved or “cool”, “fashionable”.
How my husband and I read, children hardly see, and we read not just a lot, but a lot: reading or creating different texts is our job.
They copy something completely different - endless sitting at the computer or on the phone. We work all the time, they seem to be all the time ... working.
If you continue to watch what else is being copied, it will become noticeable that books on the road are a must-have story. There is no travel without reading. But it was not possible to force them to read "according to the program" on the road. Traveling is freedom and pleasure. On the other hand, the habit gradually developed to spend leisure time in the museum, to wander the streets of the city in search of beauty, to study the history of the city, starting from their own impressions and observations of the townspeople (the son grows up as an urban linguist, listens and reads travelers, anthropologists, urbanists, the daughter pays great attention to to people, images, the atmosphere of spaces, she even evaluates cities by their state in them, and not by architecture).
2. Reading is just a way
A way to get information, to satisfy your needs. For example, the need for privacy on the road or in line to the doctor. Or the need for a special perception of the artistic world that fantasy or a detective story gives us - dived headlong, forgot everything around. Or the need for a special sense of language that poetry gives. Especially modern poetry, when the author goes on a bold experiment. By the way, our children have this need. And she is definitely from us. And it could have appeared from communication with someone else - with a teacher, with a poet, with a friend. I could grow out of my own experiences to put words together in a special way, to test them for strength. Poets are born in families where language experiments are not characteristic of anyone.
Let's return to reading as a way to get information, to remember that information can still be found in other ways: listening, watching videos, trying to do it yourself. It is strange to think that reading is the best way to absorb information.
We are all very different. And in education, reading is the top of the pyramid of ways to learn something. At the base of the pyramid are activities, trials, and experience. If you read about a new subject, then approximately 10% of the new information will be assimilated. If you look, then many times more. If you do it yourself, then up to 80% of new information will be in demand. Information is fully assimilated when you teach others. (Remember the anecdote about the teacher who complains about the students: “It got to me, but they don’t understand.”) I will add to this only my own surprise - we have catastrophically little reading in universities, even graduate school is for some reason lectures, and not work in the library. Higher education in the 21st century looks like leading students on a string (like kids were once led in kindergartens), and not independent and conscious education. There is simply no work in libraries, with documents at all.
3. Reading children also appear in non-reading parents
Why is it believed that the habit of reading has nowhere else to come from? Most often this idea is expressed by teachers.
The explanation for this thesis can be found very simple: to read, you need books. If parents do not read, then there are no books at home. There is nothing to read.
However… the world is arranged so beautifully that books in the classroom, in the school library, randomly picked up in the trash (yes, there are such books in my piggy bank of observations and overheard stories), advised or donated by a friend, are sometimes opened by a loved one man a new opportunity.
Again, I will give the example of our son, who prefers podcasts to all methods of extracting information: lately he has been reading the book by Edward Radzinsky and the detective by Agatha Christie. I received both books from my girlfriend. Everything that we offer now is not readable at all.
The child grows up in a family, that is, he learns behavior patterns, way of life, values. He may not clean up the house himself, but the behavior of his parents, older family members develops into his ideas of good and bad.
This is how pedantic fathers suddenly appear from chatty teenagers, and fighters against violence grow up in the families of abusers.
Reading books is not a copied behavior, it is just a way of solving personal problems, which depends more on abilities and temperament than on everyday life.
A person, undoubtedly, can develop a certain attitude towards books, based on the attitude of older family members towards them, but this is not at all about his reading, but rather about the placement of accents in the world of material culture. To read, a child needs books, and it is precisely those that will suit his temperament, interests, and not those that are in the home library, like mom, dad, grandfather, older brother. Reading also takes time and space. Reading is a physiological process. Ignoring this, school standards and programs do not solve the issue of children's reading - they simply do not raise the question of when and where the child reads.
It is also important to remember that any activity that we want to teach should be associated with the formation of self-esteem and the solution of tasks that are significant for the subject of reading.
If you are not ready to respect a child who reads something of his own (for example, comics), then you are doomed to think that there is no reading in your child's life. If you suggest reading simply because you want your child to read, then reading is unlikely to happen. It would be nice to have an answer to the question, why read: what question you need to find an answer to, how it will decorate life. Not in the future, but now - while reading.
Original material
Parents, children and home reading
Svetlana Pozdeeva, Doctor of Pedagogy, Head of the Department of Pedagogy and Methods of Primary Education of the Institute of Psychology and Pedagogy of the TSPU, tells about why a modern person needs to read traditional paper books.
According to the observations of sociologists, the number of readers can be calculated using the formula of one third. That is, one third of the country's population loves books and reads regularly, the second - reads from time to time, the third part does not like and does not read at all. In reading families there is a cult of the book, a rich library, all family members read; in the second third of families, reading happens sporadically; another third are families that do not have a home library and where children do not see their parents sitting with a book in their hands. But if you talk with parents, many of them believe that reading is necessary and it would be good for a child to instill a love of books. For what?
Why reading is important
Paraphrasing the words of the French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot about the benefits of reading, modern psychologists say that children who read books become adults who can think.
If a child is not accustomed to the culture of reading, this negatively affects many factors.
First of all, on intellectual development. In the process of reading, analytical and mental abilities develop: the child argues, asks questions, compares the behavior of different characters. A very important ability that works when reading is the prediction and anticipation of events and actions of heroes. In other words, at this moment the predictive function of thinking develops.
Occasional reading will affect the child's speech development. A reading child has a richer vocabulary, more detailed speech. In addition, while reading, one of the important psychological operations is always turned on - imagination. The reader imagines the characters, events, landscapes, etc., described in a literary work. The well-known psychologist Lev Vygotsky revealed the following pattern in the “imagination-speech” connection: people with a well-developed imagination are, as a rule, people with a well-developed speech.
People who are “not friends” with a book have poor spelling literacy, or, as linguists say, a linguistic instinct that actively develops while reading.
Visual memory accumulates the correct visual images of words. This helps to write correctly and competently, even if you do not remember by heart all the rules of the Russian language.
Goals and objectives
If parents want to introduce their child to the culture of reading, the first thing to remember is the well-known axiom: a reading child will not grow up in a non-reading family. In other words, if a child does not see parents in front of him who regularly devote their free time to books, he himself is unlikely to want to sit down and read.
It is not easy to become a book lover, but if you have the desire, you can start small. Minimum program - to create an appropriate environment for the child: there should be not only toys around the baby, but also books. Here it is good to recall the so-called pickled cucumber effect. In order for the cucumber to become salty, it must be placed in brine. The same is true of teaching children to read.
It is necessary to create the same "pickle" in the form of books, collecting a home library, parental reading, in which to "place" the child.
It is necessary to take an active interest in the child's reading activity outside the home: “What did you read today in kindergarten or school?”, “What was the homework?”, “What is the list of books for the summer?”
The maximum program is to create a family reading tradition. Joint reading is a very good way of interaction between an adult and a child, during which a living emotional contact is established. Psychologists believe that for toddlers, the best way to learn is through parental knees.
While reading together, an adult and a child build a dialogue through a book, which is a living contact interaction, which is so valuable today.
If the child does not yet know how to read and acts as a listener, then one should try to make this situation dialogical: pause, ask questions, encourage the child to discuss what he heard.
It will work if you read a traditional printed paper book to your child. The choice of a book should be taken seriously. It should be medium or large format, with high-quality realistic illustrations. It is necessary to pay attention to the resource content of the picture: the more objects are shown in the illustration, the more topics for discussion, and hence for development, that can be touched upon when talking with a child. This book can be read over and over again. All this gradually accustoms the child to the book.
When a child learns to read, parents often make one mistake - they stop reading to him. As a rule, this happens at the moment when the baby becomes a first grader. You shouldn't do that. Not only does this negatively affect the adaptation period at school, but also at home the child is deprived of a contact situation with a close adult.
Note that elementary school textbooks up to fourth grade have a section called Family Reading. This means that such a section should be read and discussed with the child.
How to read?
A good way to teach your child (and yourself) to read together is to alternate the roles of reader and listener: an adult reads one chapter or page, a child reads another, etc.
Reading aloud has several advantages. First, it is manageable. That is, if a child makes mistakes while reading, an adult has the opportunity to correct them, which does not happen when reading silently.
Second, reading aloud is emotional. It develops expressiveness, and therefore, the emotional sphere of the child. This is because expressive reading is reading for another. If other family members join the reading of an adult and a child, then polyphonic reading occurs when different voices and intonations sound. This is important not only to involve the child in the process of reading, but also to establish and develop warm intra-family relationships.
Thirdly, reading helps to switch from stressful situations to the story, which is calming. A strongly excited child can be calmed down by sitting down at the book.
Old and new
In the modern age, the presence of other types of books - audiobooks, e-books - cannot be ignored.
Audiobooks are convenient for both the child and the parents. In addition, they bring up taste, as the works are read by professional actors. The only negative is that when listening to audiobooks, we adapt to someone else's intonation, and it unconsciously affects our perception.
There is an opinion that listening rather than reading books is a kind of regression from the culture of the eye to the culture of the ear. After all, a person listens in what situation? Either when he cannot read himself (for example, the visually impaired or the blind), or when he cannot read.
A good solution is to combine reading traditional paper books with listening to audio books. It often happens that after listening to an audio recording, a child has a desire to read the book himself. This mutual complementation has a double positive effect.
E-books also have many advantages - convenience, lightness, large volume.
But frequent page changes and fewer lines per page put extra strain on a child's eyes.
In any case, the choice of books remains with the parents, who need to find a reasonable compromise.
Lucky Catch
Parents who want to involve their child in an exciting reading process can be helped by the following motto - Catch:
- Y - management, because the parent manages the child's reading activity as a wiser, more knowledgeable reader and significant adult;
- L - love for reading, love for a book and, of course, love for a child through joint reading;
- O - communication that inevitably arises during the moments of reading and discussing books;
- B - choice: the more choice situations (which book we will read, who will read, what time we will read) you create for your child, the more often the parent confirms the child's personal significance. Such actions of an adult in any situation, not only in relation to reading, are very important and valuable for a child.
