Hinton French immersion teacher, Edith Farfard, presented Jasper-area parents with tips to encourage their French-speaking children’s reading skills.

Held on Nov. 22 at the Sawridge Inn, the workshop, presented by the Jasper branch of Canadian Parents for French, was for English-speaking parents.

Farfard began by quoting a recent study that shows parent involvement has been proven to be more important in a child’s reading skills than the influence of a teacher. 

“The more you know how your child learns to read, the faster they will read,” she said.

Farfard showed a diagram of the brain and explained the different parts associated with reading, and how the path develops and becomes faster as the child learns. French vocabulary is stored in an entirely different part of the brain than English words. This means that children can not immediately translate French to English. That skill usually develops around Grade 3. 

Children learn by example, and Farfard said one of the important thing parents can do is keep books readily available to their children, even before they learn to actually read.

“Having lots of books available to your child is very important,” she said.

Before reading skills develop, children will look at pictures, turn the pages and begin to understand what they are looking at. Seeing their parents read and putting time aside for a good book is also very important.

“There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘Dinner has to wait a half an hour. I have to finish this chapter,’” Farfard said. 

When shopping for books and touring a library, teaching children about other types of books beyond those meant for kids can be beneficial too.

“Do not only go into the child section with your child,” Farfard said, adding that simple things like putting a calendar in your child’s room and asking them to help check off items on a grocery list, can get them used to the shape of letters. 

Pictures in books can be as important as the words on the page. When a child does not recognize or understand a word, they will associate the action in the pictures  with the words.

“The pictures help your child read,” Farfard said. “Pictures are as important as words.”

While reading together, Farfard suggests asking your child what they think is going to happen next in a story. Letting your child read the same books over and over again is fine, as memorizing words helps development of reading skills. Children will begin to notice patterns and rhymes in the words. 

When explaining letters, use proper terminology. To describe uppercase or lowercase letters, use the proper term rather than ‘big’ or ‘small’ letters. Explain to your child that a sentence begins with a capital and ends with a period; proper nouns are uppercase and can appear anywhere in a sentence, and do not mean the end of a sentence. 

Farfard explained how French teachers help kids learn to read. They name letters ladybug, giraffe or monkeys. The ladybugs are small, round letters such as a, o, and s. Giraffes are taller letters like h, t, and l, and monkeys are letters that swoop down, like g, y and p. This helps children recognize the shapes of letters. Many children who have difficulty reading may not be identifying the shapes, Farfard said. 

The talk continued, explaining syllables, vowels and consonants. Farfard explained to the English-speaking parents the different sounds that vowels can make, and how they can be modified with an accent such as an aigu, grave or circonflexe. She discussed some common vocabulary sounds with the parents.

Farfard is a French immersion teacher at Mountain View School in Hinton for kindergarten, Grade 1 and 2.