10 Ways to Help Your Child Read

Try these 10 suggestions and more of your own devising and you should soon have a child who is a keen reader in your midst. The next problem will be to get them to turn the light off and go to sleep!

1. You probably know your own child better than anyone else. Use this knowledge to motivate your child to want to read for themselves. If your child is constantly contrary - says “No” to anything you suggest - hide the reading books saying they are not really suitable for them and hey, presto - nothing will stop them from looking into these "forbidden fruits". Focus on the child and you are very unlikely to fail. If your child only wants to watch TV, choose their favorite program and let them watch it on condition they read (with a great deal of help from you first) what the TV Guide says about it first.
2. If they are beginners at reading, get them to know the names and sounds of the letters of the alphabet first. Singing the alphabet song, making up rhymes trying to find words that begin with each letter of the alphabet in turn and fill the gaps in an incomplete list of the letters are all good starters.
3. If your child is reading a few words, play word games with them. With their help, take a pile of blank cards and write on each card in turn a word that is quite easy but new to child. Write pairs of words and you can play snap. Write words that can be paired according to particular sound patterns - such as "may" and "made" and play snap.
4. Choose a difficult word from a book that they have been reading and talk about the meaning of the word. With the child, try to think of other words that have the same pattern of spelling or the same sound but is spelled differently. Try to think of other words that could be used instead of this difficult word. This could be done in quizzes - for example, if the word is “guide” ask “Which word starts with the same letter, sounds the same but ends in "y"? (answer "guy").
5. Help your child to make up their own story. Collect 10 or more words that they can just manage to read and use them in your own shared story. This could be spoken and then written down by you with the child's help.
6. Choose a book for them to read that will be at their level of ability or a little above. Asking them to read the first page or so would be enough to suggest whether the book is as a suitable level.
7. Choose a book that is bound to be interesting for your child. If their pet subject is trains - then read a book on trains, if they have just acquired a new pet cat - then it is obviously a book on cats you should choose.
8. If the book is a little advanced for your child - you do most of the reading, but stop every now and then and ask your child to read the next word - one that he or she can read. Then they will be listening and reading carefully, reading words that they had not previously known without the experience being too much like "a difficult lesson".
9. Encourage your child to follow the meaning of what is being read by getting them to use their imaginations and to describe what they imagine. For example if the reading starts: “Jack went to town…” Ask the child: “What does Jack look like? Is he tall, or short, does he have brown, blond, black or red hair? This can be a game of how silly your ideas can become at first. Later, your child will realize that sometimes it matters what you imagine while you are reading.
10. And finally, take your child to the library on a weekly visit. Show that you are interested in books by choosing some for yourself (irrespective of whether you'll have time to read them) and suggest your child goes and chooses some books for themselves to read.