Teaching Your Kids to Read
Learning to read for kids is a very important activity in their lives. The ability to read is a building block toward a lifetime of learning well. In order to have strong reading skills, it is important for child to learn to read in a proper and prescribed manner that will ensure that reading comes to him/her naturally.
To build the foundation of good reading skills, children must not only understand the sounds made by letters, but they should also grasp the meaning of a variety of words, which basically means that they should have a diverse vocabulary. Effective instructions are important for kids when they learn to read.
Parents and teachers have the most important role to play in a child’s aptitude in learning to read. Frequent interaction, conversations and daily reading sessions are very crucial in developing a child’s reading skills. The first foundation for reading is laid by the parents, while teachers take up the task later and use various methods to enable a child to read.
When a child is still an infant, it becomes the responsibility of the parents to read out loud to the little one, preferably from picture books. Guide your child through the pages using your fingers to point at those pictures which correspond to the text that you are reading out. Drawing the child’s attention to the pictures and then associating them with the text will enable the child to identify the words.
Repeating the same books over and over again will lead to the child learning each word by heart and soon, he/she will be able to identify individual letters and sounds. As the child grows up, he/she will associate various objects in the book with those in the real world and come to know about the importance of being able to read. Reading aloud to children also helps in generating their interest in books. This acts as a strong motivation to learn to read and propels the child to act upon that motivation.
Once they start attending school, the responsibility of teaching children how to read falls on both the teacher and parent. A teacher should approach the subject of learning to read for kids methodically. The reading process is learned in a specific order. The child first tries to understand how sounds make up a word; then, they associate the sounds with written words and finally, the words themselves start to make sense to the child.
Those students who have some difficulty with learning to read need to be taught the relationship between letters, words, and sounds even more emphatically. In case of kids, the success of learning to read using the phonics method depends a lot on the individual needs of the student. So, if one child starts reading early while another in the same class is still struggling over his/her words, there is no need to worry. Children need to learn at their own pace and should not be pressured.
Another factor to ensure that the child learns to read fast and looks forward to the reading sessions is to make the entire process a fun activity. Using games, puzzles, flash cards, etc. can be a good method to hold the child’s attention, generate interest, and build a love for reading in him/her.
Learning to read for kids is a continuous process, and the onus falls on the parents and teachers to ensure that the child grows up to be a strong reader.
>> If teaching your child to read is important to you, please click here for a simple and effective method that will help you teach your child to read
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