How to Get Your Six-Year-Old Engaged

 Don't worry, I'm not recommending that you walk your Kindergarten son or daughter down the aisle, I'm simply saying that engagement with what's going on around them is key for students.  As Brian Cambourne (1995) pointed out, "It didn't matter how much immersion in text and language we provided; it didn't matter how riveting, compelling, exciting, or motivating our demonstrations were; if students didn't engage with language, no learning could occur" ("Toward an Educationally Relevant Theory" in The Reading Teacher, 49 (3), p. 186).  In order to make meaningful connections with the texts that students encounter in their daily lives, they have to first be encountering things that interest them and with which they can identify on some level.  When teachers and parents take the time and effort to be good readers of books that capture the attention of the children with whom they're sharing literature, it makes a difference in the lives of those children.  As one teacher's former student shared with her, "When I read aloud to my kids before bed, it's your voice I hear in my head" (Bernice Cullinan quoted in Johnson & Keier, Catching Readers Before They Fall, 2005, ch. 6).  Furthermore, when we make learning fun, we can sneak it in there and before our kids and students know it, they've picked up something new painlessly and effortlessly, and hopefully have been giggling all the while.  One often-effective way to do this is to use a lot of community-based activities:  have kids read and write together (with parents, siblings, friends, peers) and ask them to discuss what they're hearing when you read aloud.  Children naturally want to try things out, and they want to share what they're discovering and thinking about, so encourage them in these pursuits by providing them with opportunities to explore and to experience appropriate literature and through careful question-asking and interest in what they're learning.