Different Types of Children's Books

Series Summary

Reading is an essential part of learning. It has always been a significant sign of how well a child is able to learn. With that said, there are still thousands of people in the United States alone, including children, that are not able to read. Reading can be informational, personal, rewarding and technical. It is one of the most important ways we communicate as human beings. In this world of endless signs and written instructional information, it is very important to be able to read what is going on around you and for us to teach our children the importance of, not only reading, but reading well.

When teaching reading to a child, it's best to break up the process into steps. But, how do you go about doing this and what are the steps? In this free video, our teacher will show you how to teach kids how to read, and give some tips on how to do this efficiently and effectively. After describing different types of children's books, our teacher will cover pictures and phonics, book covers, words spacing, and understanding what children see in books. You will also learn how fast to read to a child, how to predict words, and how to think aloud to teach reading. With these video lessons, your children will be reading sooner than you think!

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ann Kennedy on behalf of Expert Village and I'll be teaching you some steps to teach a child to read. One of the most important steps, and a beginning step, is know what you're reading to your child. Books today show various levels on the back covers and all parents are aware of these levels but there's a little bit more to knowing what you're reading and what and why you're reading it. There's many many different genres of children's stories and one of the most important things is to have a balanced approach and make sure that your child is immersed in fiction, traditional nursery rhymes, nonfiction picture books, not just to read fairy tales, not just to read fiction and to be aware of it. A traditional nursery rhyme is one of the most important things that you can read to your child and do with your child. Then there's the nonfiction picture book and those are a lot of fun if you make them fun. Now nonfiction is truth and there's ways of exploring the truth that isn't boring. There's lots of photographs, there's lots of books about clouds but it is a nonfiction book and please make sure your library has nonfiction books, as many as fiction books and then you also have your classic rhyming which is a lot of fun. Traditional fiction and fairy tales? Yes, fairy tales teach about characters and one of the most important reasons you're going to teach fairy tales, not only are you teaching about literature, you're giving them the basis of a story line. You're also introducing them to characters as you will in nursery rhymes that they'll meet over and over again while they're in school. So the most important thing you can do is know the genre. First check on the back of the book to find out, in this case Three Little Pigs shows level one, it's for beginning readers. Almost all books today give a level. That's important but what else is very very important is to take a second, just look through the book and being aware of what you'll be teaching. For example your Dr. Seuss, Hop on Pop, you're going to have a lot of wonderful rhymes. So give your child a smorgasbord of genres and different types of books that you'll be reading to him or her."