Reading Information for Parents
Each year teachers try to encourage parents to read with their children at home. Many even assign reading at home as homework for the children. Here are some tips on how to maximize that time you spend reading with your child at home.
Why Read with Your Child at Home?
While this may seem like a simple question, in fact there are several reasons to read with your child at home. It is more than simply a chance for your child to practice reading skills. Here is your chance to show your child what a good reader sounds like, a chance for you to help your child practice phonics skills and a chance for you to help your child’s fluency skills improve.
Let’s take a look at how you can help with all of these things.
What Does a Good Reader Sound Like?
When you read with your child at home, be sure to take a little bit of time to read to your child. Reading aloud to your child will demonstrate fluency, proper pronunciation and inflection. This will help set a good reading example for your child, and allow him or her to know what a good reader sounds like.
Helping Your Child Improve Fluency and Phonetic Skills
Children learn to read in small pieces. These pieces are the letters and the sounds that the letters make when combined together. This is called phonics. While there are also sight-words that children learn as a whole, this is not how children should learn every word. In fact, most words will be learned in pieces (or by sounding out) than as whole words.
As children add words to their vocabulary, many words will move from pieces sounded out to whole words that they simply know automatically. This is an automatic process that children go through as they learn to read more words. It is this automated process that allows a child to read fluently.
When reading with your child, understanding that words are sounded out in pieces will help you understand how to help when your child gets stuck on a word. First, never quickly tell your child the word.
Always require your child to attempt the word before receiving help. Second, encourage your child to break the words down into smaller chunks to figure it out. This is an important way to help improve your child’s reading skills.
Learn more about how to help your child sound words out.
Finally, it is important for parents to spend time reading with their children at home simply because it shows the children that reading is important. Your child may protest, say it is boring or even complain that they hate it or that it is too difficult, but persevere because the more your child reads, the better a reader he or she will become.
