Teach your child to read.
How to teach your kid to read in 5 steps.
You may be saying “This is too good to be true.” Well, I’m all about honesty. It is and it isn’t. It isn’t because it is simple. It is because it takes time, consistency, and patience. What in life truly is a snap of a finger? Besides maybe a classic dirt and worms recipe. I digress. When you decide you want to help your child read, you’re committing to practicing daily. This could be as simple as reading to them, to as complicated as sitting down and walking about the sounds letters make.
It’s up to you, the level of effort you want to give because this is asking something of you. But you knew that when you googled “How to help my kid read better?” So let’s get started, shall we?
Step one: Phonemic Awareness
This is the first step, not Phonics. If you’re a 90s kid like me this gives your trigger pains. Phonemic awareness is an early reading skill that can be done with your eyes shut. It involves manipulating sounds in words. This skill does not require looking at the letters. Simply you are teaching that words are made up of several sounds together. We can pick out sounds in different positions of words like beginning, middle, and end. For example /c/ /a/ /t/ beginning sound /c/ said like a letter K. When we teach our children to mess with our manipulate sounds they gain confidence with words.
Step 2: Phonics
This one should sound familiar. Connecting the phonemic sounds to their letter shape or the letters that combine to make this sound. Here (with English) we’re going to have to do some memorization. I’m not talking sight words, I’m taking sight sounds. Once your child sees the letters together /ee/ together rhymes with tree and three we’re on the reading train! Things get complicated when we move forward with sounds like /ough/ which technically has 9 sounds (Come on English, what in the world?)
Step 3: Vocabulary
This is tried and true. New words, old words, prefixes, affixes. Think of high school literature class when they tried to sprinkle in some Latin. Here we will be teaching our kids new words and connecting to old words we have already taught them. The trick with this is so simple, reading promotes the use of new words. When you read to your child you are exposing them to vocabulary. The most amazing thing to see is when your child is reading, they come across a word they’ve never read before, then they stretch it out, and BOOM it clicks. This happens because they have exposure to this word.
Step four: Fluency
This step comes when your child has the first three skills. Your child has confidence in their phonics skills, can read a series of words smoothly, and know what they mean. Fluency should sound nice to listen to when your child reads. Not too fast, not too slow. The best way to practice this is to read. No duh, but for real. Re-reading a book is also totally acceptable. I think we as parents want our children to read a ton, but realistically, they just need to read what they like at a level that suits them. Let your child be your guide. Many of our boys also want to read non-fiction LET THEM!
Step Five: Comprehension
This is our final step! You did it, your child knows how to manipulate sounds, read words, and new words, and read smoothly. What now? This is the goal of reading. This can be done after every book, even if you read the book to them. Ask questions! All. The. Time. Questions about illustrations, author intention, character’s choices, questions! The reason we do this is so our children can learn something from reading and then retain what they’ve read. Eventually, in school, they are asked to read and then produce knowledge from reading. That’s when school takes a turn.
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