The Big Idea: Using pictures to involve kids in reading is a big confidence builder.
Reading With Picture Clues
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- Print out the page and read the story together, running your fingers along the lines as you read them. When you get to a picture, point to it and pause, giving children a few moments to chime in. You might underline the word that spells out the image.
- When you’re finished, say something like, “You did a great job reading that story,” or “Thank you for helping me read that story.”
- Next time you read a book together, help kids use pictures to understand what’s happening, like they just did. Younger kids can use this strategy to “read” a whole story (narrating the story based on the pictures alone). Older readers can use pictures as clues to help them read a word they don’t know (for instance, if they’re struggling with the end of a word beginning with “el,” and there’s a picture of an elephant on the page, they get a hint that the word is “elephant”)!
