Ways to Help Your Child at Home with Reading

Excerpt from A Child Becomes a Reader: Proven Ideas from Research for Parents (K-Grade 3). Produced by RMC Research Corporation, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Second Edition, 2003.

What to do at home

    # Talk often with your child to build listening and speaking skills.

    # Read to and with your child often. Talk to her about the words and ideas in books.     

    # Encourage your child to read on her own.

    # Ask your child's teacher how you can help your child practice at home

Use reading opportunities to help your child develop fluency

1. Listen to your child read books that he has brought home from school. Be patient as your child practices reading. Let him know that you are proud of his reading.
2. If your child is not a very fluent reader (that is, she reads slowly and makes lots of mistakes), ask her to reread a paragraph or page a few times.

Find opportunities for your child to spell and write

1. Encourage your child to write often - for example, letters and thank-you notes to relatives and friends, simple stories, e-mails, and items for the grocery list.
2. Help your child learn the correct spellings of words.

Find opportunities to help your child develop vocabulary, knowledge of the world, and comprehension

1. Talk about new words that your child has read or heard. Ask her to make up sentences with the new words or use the words in other situations.
2. Help your child use the dictionary or thesaurus to check on the meanings of new words she reads or hears.
3. Help your child become aware of prefixes, suffixes, and root words. Point them out in books you are reading together or in print materials around the house. Ask her to think of other words related to the words you are discussing.

PARENT TALK example

"Can you think of any other words that have the word move in them?" (Some possible answers are moveable, movement, moving, and moved.) "Here's the word disappear. What other words do you know that start with dis-?"(Some possible answers are disappoint, disagree, and disbelieve.)

4.  Show your child how to use context - the sentences, words, and pictures around an unfamiliar word - to figure out the word's meaning.

PARENT TALK example

Read a line from a book, such as this line from Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes! "Take a sickle and cut as much wheat as the donkey can carry." Then ask a question, such as "Look at the picture of Jack cutting the wheat. What is he using? That's right, it's a sickle. A sickle is a tool for cutting wheat and other kinds of grain."

5. As you read a book with your child, stop now and then to talk to her about the meaning of the book. Help her relate the experiences or events in the book to experiences or events in her life or to other books you have read together. Ask her questions that encourage her to talk about the information in a nonfiction book, or about the characters or events of a fiction book. Encourage your child to ask questions. Ask her to tell in her own words what the book was about.

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