Book Orientation is a crucial part of the whole process of a child’s reading and it allows the child to make a good attempt at reading on their own.   The goal is to do just enough, but not too much to support their reading so that the child will read well, with normal problems to solve, and finish the session feeling satisfied with themselves.

Slightly different strategies are used depending on the reader’s level of experience.

Beginning readers

The goal is for children to familiarize themselves with the words, learn about the story and understand the pictures. To read, children use their known words (sight words) and use reading strategies to predict unknown words. (These strategies are found on the strategies bookmark)

• Talk about the characters, the actions and the pictures
• Read any names of characters
• Bring into the discussion any unusual words or concepts
• Discuss the pictures
• NOW It is the child’s turn to read the book.
• Let them point to the words and hold the book themselves (NB: always leave the pictures visible, never cover the pictures)

Readers with one to three years experience

The goal here is for the children to understand the whole story and to read aloud on rehearsed text.

• Look through the whole book, discussing the story, characters, actions etc
• Ask questions to encourage the child to predict what they think is going to happen in the story
• Allow time for the child to look at the text to rehearse some reading, remembering to use word strategies (found on the strategy bookmark)
• NOW they can read the book to you.

Readers with more than three years experience

The goal is to help the child be alert to, and have an opinion of, what the book is about so that this information helps with predicting meaning and solving problems.

• Look at the title, pictures and ‘blurb’
• By working together try and predict what the book is about.
• The reader then reads silently through the book
• Check if there were any problems and how they were overcome.
• NOW begin listening to a sample of reading when the person is ready. You will be listening to reading that has already been rehearsed.