Guest Blogger Rachael Walker is the Outreach Consultant for Reading Rockets, a national multimedia initiative which aims to inform and inspire parents, teachers, childcare providers, and others who touch the life of a child by providing comprehensive, accessible information on how to teach kids to read and help those who struggle. Rachael began her career in children’s literacy at Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), has also served as a consultant to the NEA’s Read Across America campaign, and was most recently the Executive Director of Reach Out and Read of Metro DC.

Labor Day has passed and now almost everyone is back to school. New faces, new routines, and new things to learn are exciting, but also make for new challenges for parents, teachers and children at the start of the school year.

Joanne Meier, who provides research guidance for Reading Rockets, shares her experiences on raising her own young readers and guides parents and teachers on the best practices in reading in her weekly blog Sound It Out. Earlier this month, Joanne wrote about how the new school year can equal tough transitions for kids and posted some good resources for parents of struggling students.

My own second grader and fifth grader have expressed their anxiety about the new school year and I expect a good deal of confusion in our household during the next few weeks. I found that along with the back-to-school materials Reading Rockets organized for parents and teachers, these resources were a big help in my home:

• Put Downs & Comebacks: suggestions on how to address a child’s negative feelings about self or school.

• Lunchbox Notes: small love notes tucked inside a lunchbox or bookbag to remind your child that you are thinking of them, reinforce reading skills, and model the power of writing.

Another big help is that my kids did a lot of reading over the summer and I’m feeling confident about their vocabulary and comprehension skills. And while they are happy that both our public library and their school have recognized their summer reading efforts, they are also pleased with the praise they are getting from mom.

This summer my kids did much of their reading on their own since with camps and vacations, our family didn’t read aloud as much together as we usually do. After we finished reading Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart together in July, the next few titles we tried just didn’t stick. So my oldest raced through the Charlie Bone series and my youngest read all the Nate the Great books that were in the library. Now that we’re backto school, we’re back to reading together and enjoying From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It’s comforting that there’s still a place for reading aloud together even as the kids get older and busier. Plus we’re all comforted to leave anxieties about school behind and be anxious instead about Claudia and Jamie and the mysteries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.