Parent Resources

Reading With Your Child

Be supportive

Remember how you "taught" your child to speak, and do likewise with reading.
Extend, bridge, encourage your child's attempts.
Praise approximations.
Let your child's interests guide you.

Be positive

Prompt for success and expect it.
Focus on what your child does correctly.
Praise any attempt that shows good reasoning, even if the outcome is incorrect.

Be meaning-oriented

Give a verbal framework for a story in introducing a book.
Read to and with your child.
Read predictable books, poetry, and folktales.
Read and reread books.
Encourage research reading.

Be a good model

Occasionally point to the words as you read aloud.
Monitor your own reading and self-correct.
Reread to clarify a word or idea.
Stop to discuss an interesting or surprising word or idea.
Stop to anticipate an upcoming word or event.
Model the joy and usefulness of reading.

Be strategic

Prompt for strategies ("What would make sense? Would would sound right? What would you expect to see...? Does that look right? Sound right? Make sense?")
Resist the temptation to tell your child when he is correct. Ask "Are you right? How did you know?"
Resist the temptation to supply a word immediately when you child hesitates.
Allow your child time to figure things out for himself.

Be helpful

Help your child know what works for him.
Ask questions to clarify his thinking. ("How did you know that? What made you think...?")
Encourage your child to read books that are at a comfortable level for him. Reading does not improve when the books are at frustration level.

Be relevant

Make reading and writing relevant and useful.
Play games that involve reading.
Have your child help read maps, cookbooks, information from the Internet, etc.
Make lists, write letters, design cards, etc.

[U.S. Reading][Suggestions][Observing Your Child][Prompting]
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