Tips for Supporting Reading Skills at Home (K-3)
Parents and caregivers play an important role in ensuring that our students make consistent growth in reading. Please use the following tips to support the development of your child’s reading skills:
Have conversations before, during, and after reading together. (K-3)
Having conversations when reading with children helps them develop higher-level thinking and language skills such as predicting, problem-solving, or contrasting. When reading books aloud, ask your child questions and talk about the content of the story together before, during, and after reading.
Use open-ended questions to ask the child to think about a book’s message(s) and what is happening. For example, when reading informational books, you could ask: “Why do birds fly south for the winter?” or “Why is it important to recycle?” When reading fiction books, you could ask, “Why did the character do what he did?” or “If you were in the story, what would you have done?”
Ask your child to apply the book’s messages to the world around him by connecting events to his own life.
Ask more and more complex questions so the child continues to build her vocabulary and language skills.
Help children learn how to break sentences into words and words into syllables. (K-1) .Before children can identify letter sounds in words or reading, they can learn how spoken language can be broken down into smaller pieces.
Show children that they can break down sentences into words. Try saying a sentence and ask your child to count the number of words in the sentence.
After children can identify words in sentences, they can begin to break down words into syllables. Some strategies include: placing your hand under your chin and noticing the number of times your chin moves down when saying the word slowly, and holding up a finger for each syllable as you say a word.
Help children sound out words smoothly. (K-3)Sounding out a word involves saying the sound of each letter or letter combination one by one until the end of the word, and then saying them all together again quickly.
Show how to say each letter sound in a word, starting at the left-hand letter and moving right, and then joining all the sounds together to form the word.
Stretch and connect sounds together as much as possible.
Remind children to check their pronunciation after they connect the sounds together. Ask, “What is the word? Is that a real word? Does it make sense?” If the word does not make sense, ask the child to read the word again.
Model reading fluently by practicing reading aloud with your child. (K-1)Having children read aloud daily, both with and without feedback, helps them develop the skills of reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Follow the tips below when reading aloud together.
Model and provide feedback on proper tone, pausing, and word emphasis.
Set a slow, steady pace, slowing down for words that are challenging. Gradually increase the pace, moving on to more difficult books. Remind your child that reading fluently does not necessarily mean reading quickly.
Use familiar books. Make sure that the book is appropriate to the child’s reading ability. If the book is too difficult, children can develop poor reading habits.
Some options for reading aloud with your child include:
Take turns reading continuous passages of a book.
Read the same passage of a book aloud at the same time.
Read a passage of a book aloud and then have the child read the same passage aloud.
If you have any questions about the above tips or about your child’s reading development, please reach out to your child’s teacher or the Eli Terry Reading Consultant at kparkin@swindsor.k12.ct.us.
Source: What Works Clearinghouse and the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance
