Daily Steps to Becoming a Good Reader
Your child’s journey to becoming a good reader begins at home, long before he enters school. Research has shown that children are more successful in academics and social development when there is parent (family) involvement. Involvement in your child’s learning, whether it is at home or as a volunteer in the classroom, is key to his success. Remember, you are your child’s role model, parent, and teacher.
Below is a list of daily steps you can take with your child to help him develop into a reader.
- Talk to and listen to your child
- Read a variety of texts to your
- Encourage pretend reading
- Model how to handle books (print awareness)
- Expose your child to print everywhere (At home, restaurants, grocery story, or on billboards)
- Use magnetic letters to identify letter names, shapes, and sounds
- Use children’s songs, music , nursery rhymes, and lullabies
- Identify separate sounds in spoken language
- Encourage your child to tell you about his writing, scribbles, or drawings
- Point out simple words in print until your child recognizes them
- Play alphabet games and sing alphabet songs with your child
- Make simple words with magnetic letters
- Use picture books with all ages to help with visualization skills
- Write notes or draw pictures back and forth to your child
Various reading activities, built around research-based methods, can be found in our Activities & Printables section. The activities will help you discover ways to reinforce specific skills being taught in the classroom.
We recommend you spend fifteen minutes every day on one activity. Once your child has reached the goal, then introduce a new one. Always let your child guide his learning – five valuable minutes is worth more than fifteen minutes of unfocused attention. Always keep the activities fun and upbeat! The way you present each activity could determine the interest and excitement your child displays. So, be positive, silly, excited, and encouraging!
Daily steps main source of information is the report of the National Reading Panel, Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction.
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Strategies Tools & Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
