Helping Your Child with Reading

This week I had two friends ask about reading, and how they can help their child at home. One of my friends expressed how parent/ teacher conferences were so hard because she didn’t understand everything the teacher was discussing. After talking to her, I thought it would be great for me to simplify reading, so parents can help their children at home.

One of the best programs out there for learning beginning reading skills (Pre-K to 1^st grade) is called Preschool Prep Company. This company has developed DVD’s, books, flashcards and activities that help provide a great foundation for decoding, phonics, phonemic awareness, and sight words. If you do not feel confident in helping your child, you can always start with that program. If you do feel confident, here is a list of skills a child needs for reading:

1 ) Decoding- skills used to figure out a word such as: word attack skills/ learning how to sound out a word (phonics), using context clues

·         Learn letters and their sounds

·         Build from single letter to a word

·         Look at word families

·         Look at clusters of sounds (break the word a part)

·         Look at words around the word

·         Look at pictures

·         Use knowledge of similar words to figure out a word

2) Phonics- learning to read by sounds or clusters of sounds

·         Learn letters and their sounds

·         Learn clusters of sounds

·         Use knowledge of sounds to sound out words

3) Phonemic Awareness- ability to notice, think about, and say sounds of words.

·         Learn letters and their sounds

·         Learn clusters of sounds

·         Use knowledge of sounds to sound out words

·         Learn how to rhyme/ form word families

·         Explain rhyming and give an example

·         Notice words that rhyme

4) Sight Words- words that are memorized by sight/ most cannot be sounded out

·         List of sight words can be found on the Dolch website: http://www.dolchsightwords.org/ another great source is Fry’s 1,000 high frequency words

·         Make a word wall at home on a poster board. Add a word every couple days. Practice words every night.

 

To develop these skills, you would start with working on one objective, such as, learn letters and their sounds. With each objective you want to: model, work on it together, and then have them do it by themselves:

I would break that objective down to one letter a day. You would introduce the letter, talk about its sound. Read a book about that letter. Then do activities, such as have the child write the letter, draw pictures that start with that letter, or find/ cut out / glue pictures that start with that letter.

Once the child has a basic foundation of the objectives above, the child needs to be reading on their independent level (child can read page with zero to one mistake) and modeled reading through an instructional level (child can read passage with no more than four to five mistakes). During modeled reading, you are reading to your child, pointing at words and checking for comprehension by asking questions (such as Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?). The child doesn’t read to you on an instructional level because it is too hard, can cause frustration, and they are unable to comprehend because they are too focused on using their reading skills to solve words. A great website for read aloud books is www.starfall.com. This site reads to your child while highlighting words that are being said.

I hope this helps you, as you navigate your child through the wonderful world of literacy. One of the best quotes I ever heard was, “No greater treasure will there ever be than having a parent read to me.” Spending one on one time with your child’s reading can make a big difference. I hope this helps you know where to start.