Health & Fitness
How Wordless Books Build Strong Readers
The Orion Township Public Library has lots of wordless picture books that develop reading skills and inspire confidence.
At the Orion Township Public Library, we are all about reading. If you’re trying to help your kids learn to read, why read wordless picture books? Isn’t reading all about letters and words?
Yes and no.
Reading is: to inspect and apprehend the meaning of writing or other signs or characters. (Thanks, dictionary.com based on the Random House dictionary!) So, reading a book means gaining meaning from the words and from the pictures. Here are some key reading skills kids build when they read wordless books:
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- Comprehension as they follow the story shown in the pictures
- Print concepts (we read top to bottom, left to right)
- Sequencing
- Inferring
- Predicting
- Vocabulary
How can a wordless book build a child’s vocabulary? Research led by professors Sandra Gilliam, Ph. D. and Lisa Boyce, Ph. D. from the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University showed that mothers used more complex language when sharing a wordless book with their children than they did when they made comments while reading a book with words.
(Utah State University Study Shows Parents Are More Engaged With Their Children When Reading Books Without Text June 07, 2011, www.Businesswire.com retrieved June 15, 2012)
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And of course, the most important reason to share wordless books is because these books draw kids into a world where even those who struggle with letter recognition can successfully read a fantastic story. Here is one of my favorites: Chalk by Bill Thomson. Thomson’s photorealistic art always amazes me. Three children find a bag of chalk on the playground. When they start to draw, their pictures come to life! So when the boy draws a dinosaur, the kids have a huge problem on their hands. Finding a solution takes some clever thinking. Have plenty of chalk on hand after reading this book, and make space on your driveway for your sure-to-be-eager artists.
The Orion Township Public Library has lots of wordless picture books that even your youngest children can read and feel successful. And if you're looking for books with words, we have plenty of those as well!
For more book recommendations and extension activities, please visit kristenremenar.com.
