Teaching a child to read is one of the most important things a parent can do. Although teachers may have more training or experience, parents are every child’s first teachers, and the beginning of the reading learning process starts long before the child goes to school. Here are some simple tips from an experienced elementary school educator.
Take Time
It’s important to consider reading as part of a child’s overall language development, not a separate skill. With this lens, it’s clear that early exposure to spoken and written language will have lasting effects on how a child learns to read. It’s probably no surprise to you that learning is intimately linked to your emotions. Stress, anxiety, anger, fear, or other negative emotions cause the release of hormones that can prevent the memorization of new information and slow down the learning process. This is just one more reason why reading with your child should be a fun, shared activity, not a stressful one.
The single most helpful thing a parent can do to help their child learn to read is to read to their children and read with their young and small children. There are many reasons why this simple action has a strong effect on a child’s learning. First, the time spent with your child is vital for helping them develop positive self-esteem.
Also, if you are consistent in reading with your child, they will learn from your example that reading is important. Finally, by watching and listening as you read, your child will naturally begin to pick up patterns in sounds and words.
It’s a Process
Like walking, talking, or riding a bike, there are many skills that contribute to a child’s reading ability. Good parents don’t dwell on their child’s language imperfections; in fact, most parents are proud of the brief, poorly pronounced language experiments that come out of their children’s mouths. Learning to read is the same way. Just because it’s not perfect doesn’t mean they’re not reading, and every new book should be another way to build confidence in your young reader.
There are many important steps through which parents can guide their children as they learn to read. “Reading” pictures is a simple but powerful skill that teaches children to assign meaning to objects on a page. Reading pictures is a great habit to establish for young readers, as it helps them rely on context for clues about unfamiliar words or ideas.
Many parents observe that their children will begin to recite a story or favorite book long before they are actually able to read it. When children mimic reading in this way, they experience the look and sound of reading and gain confidence that they can do it.
“Sounding out” is a well-known idea that often comes up in the early stages of reading. Recognizing letter/sound patterns is vital for a child’s success as a reader. Rhyming games, sound games, and sound blending games will all contribute to a child’s reading ability. A simple example might be asking a child to say all the words they can think of that start with the same sound as “goat”. Making the connection between sounds off the page will only support them as they learn to connect written symbols and sounds.
There is a downside to the “sounding out” phonics strategy. Many students and parents subscribe to the unconscious belief that if they can pronounce a word, they can read the word. Separating the written word from its intended meaning is understandably dangerous. Even as adults, we encounter words that we are able to pronounce or even syllabify correctly, even though we have no idea what the word actually means. We have relied on other strategies, mainly looking at the context of the word, to help us understand it. Young children are no different, and encouraging them to use pictures and prior knowledge to make sense of what they are reading can help them become skilled readers, even into adulthood.
Love Patience and Love
One very important thing to remember as you prepare to teach a child to read is that reading is a very complex and complicated process. As adults, it’s easy to take for granted the many different ways we process language. As teachers, it’s important that every parent recognizes that it takes a lot of work to turn the scribbles on a page into sounds, the sounds into words, and the words into meaning. Love, patience, and a love for reading will be visible to your child and will greatly encourage them as they learn.
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