Reading Award

A thoughtful gesture of recognition brought a wonderful moment of confidence for our T.

In addition to his handwriting skills, Team T at school and at home are working hard with him on reading.

Reading with T, especially at bedtime, has been a favourite activity since he was a toddler.

So many wonderful stories read over the years and snuggling together at night while reading with him is one of my favourite parts of my day.

T recently turned 6 and we’re aware that at this age and as he heads into Grade 1 next year, reading is a skill he will need to ramp up.

I sometimes feel that because his JK and SK years have been so disrupted with pandemic virtual schooling, he may be a bit behind with reading.

But there have been many great strategies and tools introduced by his school.

During virtual learning, they provided us with free access to a fantastic online resource called RazKids.

We continue to practice with it on the weekends even though he’s back in school now.

Using this online resource, T can have a story read out loud to him and then he can record himself reading the stories.

Now that he’s back in school, his teacher and Child Youth Worker send home a simple book to practice with him at night. He recently moved up to Level B books – hooray!

His teacher assigns very simple books – much more simple than the books I read to him at night. Books with simple repetition and simple sight words – such as the one pictured below.

I notice with T, he often reads by rote and takes a lot of cues from the pictures. So in one sense, he’s accurately describing the picture but not exactly reading it word for word.

And I know that’s ok, because this is part of the process of learning to read.

And it’s also ok he doesn’t know a lot of sight words yet, as it’s also part of the journey. Although his Child Youth Worker let us know this week he’s making incremental progress.

So I remind myself to be patient, because there was one point when T didn’t know how to talk either and now he’s a chatty little guy.

Recently, there was a special extra item included with his daily book sent home by his teacher: a Reading Award, pictured at the top, that recognized him for Outstanding Reading Ability.

I realize this is more like a “participation award” but the hubby and I were nonetheless delighted.

We excitedly showed T and we read the message on the award word by word, with proud smiles, and told him how awesome he’s been at working hard on his reading.

I wish I could’ve taken a picture of T’s face but then I would’ve have been able to just simply enjoy the moment like I did. How his face slowly relaxed into a proud beaming smile.

It was a short lived but genuinely pure and proud look on his face, and an image and a feeling that I have tattooed into my mind.