Reading Potatoes, Papaw, and Me

Improving Vocabulary

Sometimes we come across words in our reading that we haven’t heard before. At times, it doesn’t interfere with our understanding. Other times, it makes the text confusing. For example, in Potatoes, Papaw, and Me, you might not know what “mist” is. Maybe you can figure it out from the other words in the text or even from the pictures. If not, you might ask someone the meaning of the word or better yet, you can Google an image. No matter which option you use to understand the new word, always go back and reread the text, noticing your new understanding. 

Parents and teachers can check a child’s understanding by asking about words they might not know. It’s not important that your child knows every single word as long he gets the gist of the text. But by choosing some unknown words and helping him understand either by connecting it to something he already knows or finding an image that represents the word to share, you can enhance your child’s vocabulary and as a result, his or her reading ability. 

Visualizing what you read

Although there are illustrations in this book, with any story it is fun to practice visualizing what you read into vivid scenes. Try letting someone read the words without showing you the pictures. Close your eyes and picture it in your head. 

What do you see? What colors do you see? What is happening? Who is there? What do they look like? Take a moment and just concentrate on the picture in your head. 

Which words in the text helped you create the picture in your head? Which words created more detail?

To visualize means to create a picture in your head. When the words in the text are descriptive and well chosen, you can see the scene in detail. Visualizing helps us understand what we read and it helps us enjoy reading too. If we can’t see it, we can’t understand it, and that’s simply no fun at all. 

Sometimes we can’t create a picture in our heads because there are words we don’t understand. When that is the case, take time to find out the meaning of the word (see previous page), then try again until you are satisfied with a cool image in your head.