Our "Readerly" Lives

When we are reading lots of us have this question: "What does this word mean?"

It is so good to have questions when we are reading because that shows that we are really thinking about the text!


And over these couple of weeks we have discovered strategies in which we can independantly figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word:

• Look out for the base word. If i know the base word then I can figure out the meaning together with the prefix and suffix too...


• Look out for compound words - 2 words joined together. If we know what each one means seperately then we can probably figure out the meaning of the compound.


• Look out for Idioms and sayings. They dont have literal meanings.
  
• Look out for context clues. There are so many unfamiliar words that we can understand when we look at the sentences and ideas around it...
  

We are practicing these strategies in our independant reading. And if your child asks "What does this mean?", see if they can use one of the above to figure it out...