ICS Inter-Community School Library: Parent Resources: Home

Reading at Home

Reading Tips From Kids
Here are a few tried-and-true guidelines from Reading Is Fundamental on how to motivate kids to read, with comments and suggestions from kids themselves.
When Kids Hate To Read
Children who aren't motivated to read can benefit from support at home. Learn what parents can do to make reading a more enjoyable experience for struggling readers in this interview with Dr. Marie Carbo.
7 Tips For Motivating Kids To Read
Reading is the key to success in almost every subject across the school curriculum and research has shown that it is the biggest driver of vocabulary acquisition. The more kids read, the more words they learn from context and the more texts they can access.

Reading with your Child
Sharing a book with a child is fun! It's a time for closeness, laughing and talking together – and it can also give children a flying start in life and help them become lifelong readers.

Beyond The Classroom

The Magic of Picture Books

The Magic of Picture Books
Picture books are a portal to another world. One where kids can explore the unfamiliar and learn new and exciting things. With vibrant illustrations combined with words and imagination, the magic picture books hold for children is anything but boring. But these enchanting book friends do so much more! Key statistics show how powerful and magical they can be.

Books on Reading

Keeping Kids Reading by Mary Leonhardt Avid readers are fluent readers: they absorb information more easily, they write better, they perform better on standardized tests. In Keeping Kids Reading, Mary Leonhardt shows parents how to instill a love of reading in their children and how to nurture that love, in spite of the temptations of television, video games, and computers. Based on observation and interviews with students and more than twenty-five years in the classroom, Leonhardt has formulated an innovative new concept called "reading pathways" that facilitates parents' understanding of their children's taste in books. Once you recognize your children's reading patterns, you'll find it easy, using Leonardt's methods, to appeal to their individual tastes and help move them along the path to a lifelong love of reading.
ISBN: 9780552554985
For the Love of Reading by David Bouchard; Sally Bender (As told to); Anne Letain (As told to); Lucie Poulin-Mackey (As told to) In For the Love of Reading, David Bouchard has teamed up with literacy experts Sally Bender, Anne Letain, and Lucie Poulin-Mackey to give lists of books to inspire us and our children. Whether you are a parent, a teacher, an administrator, an auntie, a grandpa or Mum's best friend, in For the Love of Reading you will find books to strike your fancy and the fancies of all the children in your life. Each author provides lists of books for all ages, as well as lists of seasonal books, resources, favorite strategies to encourage reading and those strategies to avoid. Lucie Poulin-Mackey's lists are of books in French. Indices are provided by author and title.
The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma; Jim Brozina (Foreword by) When Alice Ozma was in 4th grade, she and her father decided to see if he could read aloud to her for 100 consecutive nights. On the hundreth night, they shared pancakes to celebrate, but it soon became evident that neither wanted to let go of their storytelling ritual. So they decided to continue what they called "The Streak." Alice's father read aloud to her every night without fail until the day she left for college. Alice approaches her book as a series of vignettes about her relationship with her father and the life lessons learned from the books he read to her. Books included in the Streak were: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Shakespeare's plays.
How to Get Your Child to Love Reading by Esmé Raji Codell; Esmé Raji Codell "An exuberant treasure trove for parents." --Publishers Weekly Are children reading enough? Not according to most parents and teachers, who know that reading aloud with children fosters a lifelong love of books, ensures better standardized test scores, promotes greater success in school, and helps instill the values we most want to pass on. Esmé Raji Codell--an inspiring children's literature specialist and an energetic teacher--has the solution. She's turned her years of experience with children, parents, librarians, and fellow educators into a great big indispensable volume designed to help parents get their kids excited about reading. Here are hundreds of easy and inventive ideas, innovative projects, creative activities, and inspiring suggestions that have been shared, tried, and proven with children from birth through eighth grade. This five-hundred-page volume is brimming with themes for superlative storytimes and book-based birthday parties, ideas for mad-scientist experiments and half-pint cooking adventures, stories for reluctant readers and book groups for boys, step-by-step instructions for book parades, book-related crafts, storytelling festivals, literature-based radio broadcasts, readers' theater, and more. There are book lists galore, with subject-driven reading recommendations for science, math, cooking, nature, adventure, music, weather, gardening, sports, mythology, poetry, history, biography, fiction, and fairy tales. Codell's creative thinking and infectious enthusiasm will empower even the busiest parents and children to include literature in their lives.

3 Ways Graphic Novels Benefit Reading Skills

3 Ways Graphic Novels Benefit Reading Skills
Graphic novels improve literacy skills and encourage kids to dive into books for fun — the perfect recipe for a love of reading.
The Benefits of Reading Graphic Novels
How Graphic Novels Help Students Develop Critical Skills

Reading Lists for Elementary School Children

This list of recommended reading books for grade 5 has been curated and compiled by teachers and librarians to appeal to elementary school children in the 5th Grade, aged 10-11.

Your Next Read

YourNextRead was founded in 2009 as a novel way to explore book recommendations. Its focus was on creating connections using insight from real readers and using a novel experience to explore these connections and find serendipitous recommendations.

Getting Started with SORA E-Books and Audio Books

Step 1: Install the Sora app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, or go to soraapp.com.

Step 2: In Sora, find Swiss Group of International Schools, then sign in with the ICSZ Google account

Step 3: Browse the Explore tab and borrow a book. Your book will open so you can start reading right away.

Step 4: Close the book and go to Shelf to see all your books (including assignments). From there, you can:

Select Open Book or Open Audiobook to read or listen to the book.

Select Options to renew or return the book, see your notes and highlights, and more.

*For more support, visit Sora Help or Ask your friendly Librarians! Parents, please contact Ms. Wocke at gwocke@icsz.ch for opening a Sora account!

Dibiost@German Digital Library

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Dibiost (Digitale Bibliothek Ostschweiz) is a German Language platform that offers a variety of resources online e.g., ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, videos, music, etc. You can access Dibiost via their website or download the online app from your app store.

Scroll down the list of libraries until you find Zumikon (ICSZ Inter-Community School Zurich) and choose this as your library. To login, use your ICS student ID (printer code) in both the user ID and Password fields. If you need help with the password, please contact us at library@icsz.ch

For detailed instructions, please watch this video...