How to Improve Your Childs Reading Skills

Top tips to improve reading skills in children and to inculcate good reading habits in children.

Introduction

“BOOKS aren’t just made of words…they’re also filled with PLACES to visit and PEOPLE to meet.” Sitting in your room with your book you could go off to faraway places, meet all kinds of people, animals, birds and even fairies.

What fun!

Through books children can enrich their minds; they can also relax and enjoy some precious leisure moments. Reading will teach them many new words. They will write better and speak well. Read books to discover lots of new things!

With your help, your children can begin a lifelong relationship with the printed word, so they grow into adults who read easily and frequently whether for business, knowledge, or pleasure.

Importance of Reading Aloud to Children

If you want your child to get better at reading, you must read aloud together, and fill your story times with a variety of books.

Children learn to love the sound of language before they even notice the existence of printed words on a page. Reading books aloud to children stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word

At just a few months of age, an infant can look at pictures, listen to your voice, and point to objects on cardboard pages. Guide your child by pointing to the pictures, and say the names of the various objects. By drawing attention to pictures and associating the words with both pictures and the real-world objects, your child will learn the importance of language.

Even after children lean to read by themselves, it’s still important for you to read aloud together. By reading stories that are on their interest level, but beyond their reading level, you can stretch young readers’ understanding and motivate them to improve their skills.

Children who are read to, grow to love books. Over the years, these children will have good memories, they will remember stories that made them laugh and stories that made them cry.

By reading aloud together, by being examples, and by doing other activities, parents are in a unique position to help children enjoy reading and see the value of it.

How to Improve Your Childs Reading Skills

Nothing is more important to academic achievement than being a good reader. Parents know their children best and can provide the one-on-one time and attention that will lead them to success in reading.

Between the ages of 4 and 7, many children begin to recognize words on a page.

Here are a few concepts we adults know so well we forget sometimes we ever learned them.

• There’s a difference between words and pictures. Point to the print as you read aloud.
• Words on a page have meaning, and that is what we learn to read.
• Words go across the page from left to right. Follow with your finger as you read.
• Words on a page are made up of letters and are separated by a space.
• Each letter has at least two forms: one for capital letters and one for small letters.

There are things that parents can give children at home that the classrooms cannot give.

Here is a list of ways to help your children become more effective readers.

Set aside a regular time to read to your children every day

Studies show that regularly reading out loud to children will produce significant gains in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and the decoding of words. Whether your children are preschoolers or preteens, it will increase their desire to read independently.

Surround your children with reading material

Children with a large array of reading materials in their homes score higher on standardized tests. Tempt your kids to read by having a large supply of appealing books and magazines at their reading level. Put the reading materials in cars, bathrooms, bedrooms, family rooms, and even by the TV.

Have a family reading time
Establish a daily 15 to 30 minute time when everyone in the family reads together silently. Seeing you read will inspire your children to read. Just 15 minutes of daily practice is sufficient to increase their reading fluency.

Encourage a wide variety of reading activities
Make reading an integral part of your children’s lives. Have them read menus, roadside signs, game directions, weather reports, movie time listings, and other practical everyday information. Also, make sure they always have something to read in their spare time when they could be waiting for appointments or riding in a car.

Develop the library habit
Entice your children to read more by taking them to the library every few weeks to get new reading materials. The library also offers reading programs for children of all ages that may appeal to your children and further increase their interest in reading.

Be knowledgeable about your children’s progress
Find out what reading skills they are expected to have at each grade level. The school’s curriculum will give you this information. Track their progress in acquiring basic reading skills on report cards and standardized tests.

Look for reading problems
Teachers do not always detect children’s reading problems until they’ve become serious. Find out if your children can sound out words, know sight words, use context to identify unknown words, and clearly understand what they read.

Get help promptly for reading problems
Reading problems do not magically disappear with time. The earlier children receive help, the more likely they will become good readers. Make sure your children receive necessary help from teachers, tutors, or learning centers as soon as you discover a problem.

Use a variety of aids to help your children
To help your children improve their reading, use textbooks, computer programs, books-on-tape, and other materials available in stores. Games are especially good choices because they let children have fun as they work on their skills.

Show enthusiasm for your children’s reading
Your reaction has a great influence on how hard they will try to become good readers. Be sure to give them genuine praise for their efforts.

Why do Kids want the same book read over and over?

Just as you didn’t learn the names of everyone in your neighborhood or parish overnight, children also need repeated readings in order to learn.

This means, reading a different book every day may keep the adult from being bored but it also prevents the child from the reinforcement needed for learning.

For a toddler, repeated readings of a smaller number of books in the family is better than a huge collection read infrequently.

Like their parents, children are most comfortable with the familiar, and when they are relaxed, they’re better able to absorb. Those of us who have seen a movie more than once fully realize how many subtleties escaped us the first time. Even more so with children and books.

The repeated readings also help build children’s self-esteem.

• First, the reader makes the child feel good by granting his wish for a repeat performance.
• Second, with each repetition the child is better able to predict what will happen next.

Very little in a child’s life is completely predictable. They never know what you will give them to wear, to eat, or where you will take them on a given day. And then along comes this book that your repeated readings have made entirely predictable, something at which the young child is suddenly an expert. He can tell you exactly what will happen next, word for word, page for page.

Know When Your Child is Struggling in School

Once your child moves into first, second, and third grade, being able to read fluently and comprehend what he or she reads become critical for future success in school.

Here are some things to watch for that may suggest that your child is a struggling reader.

Does your child?

• Have difficulty remembering lessons?
• Hate to read aloud?
• Guess at words?
• Continue to need to sound out most words on a page?
• Struggle as he/she is working to sound out the words?
• Read slowly with a very choppy sound?
• Complain that he or she doesn’t understand what he or she’s read?

If so, talk with your school about getting your child some extra help. You also may want to consult with a private reading specialist or speech therapist.

FAQs related to reading, speech & language problems

Q: Is there really a reading problem?

A: For more than half of all fourth graders, reading remains a formidable challenge. For at least 20% to 30%, reading is one of the most difficult tasks they will have to master throughout their schooling.

Q: Why do some children have such difficulty in learning to read?

A: Some children are simply not exposed to an adequate amount of reading and language patterns early in life. Family and home-life also has great influences on a child’s reading skills.

Q: At what age should a child begin reading?

A: Both research and practical experience show that learning to read is not natural, as is learning it speak; therefore, it needs to be taught. School-age is the appropriate time to begin, starting with some activities in Kindergarten and more formal instruction in first grade.

Children should engage in letter and number games and play with language through nursery rhymes, storybooks, and activities.

Q: What about children who display reading difficulty at an early age?

A: Early reading intervention is important: If reading intervention is delayed until nine years of age, the time when most children with reading difficulties receive services, approximately 75% of the children will continue to have difficulties learning to read throughout high school.

If your child hasn’t learned to read by the second grade, it is important to secure the services of someone who can provide thirty minutes of daily one-to-one tutoring in phonemic awareness, alphabetic decoding, word recognition strategies, spelling, and reading comprehension.

Q: Why is there a debate between whole languages vs. phonics programs, even within the educators?

A: Unfortunately, many people are caught between conflicting schools of thought about how to teach reading, even teachers: Reading teachers are frequently presented with a ‘one size fits all’ philosophy that emphasize either “whole language” or “phonics”. Whole language approaches commonly use pictures and stories to teach. Most young children just learning to read need the fundamentals (see below) first before reading will make sense. The best reading program offers children lots of opportunities to be exposed to good literature, but requires children to understand the basics before they are expected to know how to read the books themselves.

Genres of Stories

• Fiction: Not real, Story Talk, Read to enjoy, Read in order, Illustrations, Beginning mid and end, characters and settings, Problem and solution.
• Non-Fiction: Rea, Fact Talk, Read to learn, Read in any order, Photos and charts and graphs, Table of contents, Index glossary bold-words labels, True information directions.

Read: Various genres of stories

Recommended Story Books & Resources

Picture books are perfect teaching vehicles for toddlers. Point to the various items illustrated in the book, call them by name, ask the child to say the name with you, and praise any responses.

Two books stand out for this purpose: The Everything Book by Denise Fleming (Holt) and My First Word Book by Angela Wilkes (DK). The latter is a collection of photographs of 1000 common items and aimed at 18-36 months, while “The Everything Book” focuses on infants to 18 months and contains a smaller number of images, including animals, shapes, colors, rhymes, finger games, food, faces, letters, traffic, and toys.

For the grownup kids, read at least one story book from the list of books given below.

• Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
• The Water Babies
• Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
• Graphic Novels: Amar Chitra Katha
• Matilda

Parents, please continue to encourage your child to read.

Here are lists of sites you can use to encourage reading.

• http://www.bookadventure.com
• http://www.magickeys.com/books/
• https://www.storynory.com/
• http://mrsp.com/