November is National Family Literacy Month.

Greene County School District Reading Specialist Julie Neal says the ideal minimum amount of time parents or guardians should spend reading to their kids is 20 minutes a day. She describes different strategies that can be used to help kids better understand what they are reading.

“Talking to your kids about what they’re reading: before, during and after reading; giving them deeper questions like, ‘How does it relate to our lives?’ Just different questions because that deepens their comprehension, it also expands their vocabulary. Even reading to them is huge. Listening to your child read and reading with them, that’s also modeling fluency with them.”

Above all, Neal says when adults read to kids at home, make it an “enjoyable” experience.

“We want them to read what interests them and (stories) that are engaging, and that they enjoy (reading). And again, there’s so much out there that we could be exposed to.”

For more about tips and ways to read to kids in your own home during National Family Literacy Month, listen to this coming Monday’s Community State Bank in Paton Let’s Talk Greene County program.