Teach a Child to Read
Ranked #3,566 in Parenting & Kids, #116,872 overall
Want to Teach Your Child to Read?
Success in school depends on being able to read. Poor reading skills can affect a child's self-esteem. Parents don't have to buy expensive reading programs or pay for reading tutors. Parents can teach their children to read! You can teach your child to read!
Contents at a Glance
What Reading Skills Do Children Need?
Comprehension (understands what is read and fixes reading and thinking when something doesn't make sense)
Vocabulary (knows many words and can figure out meanings of unknown words)
Fluency (reads like a person talks)
Decoding (reads words)
Good readers' thought processes develop over time. The National Reading Panel has put together a report based on numerous studies of good readers. This information is available online. There are specific teaching guides for parents and teachers. This impressive collection of data is getting us closer to finding out what works to help children become successful readers.
You will find ways to check and teach COMPREHENSION, VOCABULARY, FLUENCY, and DECODING on this page.
How do children become good readers?
They practice reading with a supportive adult and listen to books read out loud.
A child is practicing reading skills every time a book is read. In fact, each time a familiar book is read it becomes easier for a child to combine reading skills. Rereading the same books is a lot like doing the same sports drill over and over.My own children had boxes of favorite books for rereading. I think they did most of their learning how to read while rereading the same books. I usually bought inexpensive books, so my children had many choices. You can help your child by having books your child likes available for rereading and encouraging your child to read everyday.
Continue reading out loud to your beginning reader. This is one of the best things you can do to develop a love of reading and teach combining reading skills. Talking about a book and your thinking while reading helps too.
Listen to Your Child Read Everyday!
Listening to a child read and offering support is easier than most parents think.
Teaching your own child to read has special challenges. You can keep the frustration level low by making sure books are at your child's reading level. If your child generally makes a mistake or takes a long time to sound out more than one in ten words, the books your child is reading are at frustration level. Easier books should be chosen.
Be patient.
Let your child know you are his or her audience.
You expect the story you hear to make sense, so you expect your child to fix anything that is confusing.
You can explain it like this. As you listen to a story there's a movie playing in your head. If something is not read correctly, the movie in your head gets fuzzy or stops. Ask your child to make a movie in his or her head too.
Hopefully your child will fix his or her reading or ask for help when something stops making sense. Let your child know if something didn't make sense to you. Give your child time to use and combine reading skills. Wait for your child to ask for help before pointing out a mistake or jumping in to show how to read a word.
It's okay to tell your child a word sometimes. You might want to point out letter sounds or ask your child to look at pictures and think about what might make sense, but you don't have to do it every time. You want to keep the flow of the story going, so your child's movie doesn't stop.
Your child may ask you what a word means or want to talk about the story. That's great! Now is your chance to be supportive! Keep reading to find ways to support your early reader.
Take Each Reading Skill Quiz
Answer Questions Based on Your Child's Reading Behaviors to Find Which Reading Skills to Teach
“Take this quiz to check your child's reading comprehension.”
How's Your Child's Reading Comprehension?
Take this five question quiz.
If you answer yes to at least four questions, your child's reading comprehension is pretty good.
READING COMPREHENSION
A reader with good reading comprehension has a purpose for reading, monitors for understanding while reading, and checks for understanding after reading.I recommend checking out Reading Rockets Target the Problem! Comprehension to find ways to help a reader improve reading comprehension.
The television show WordWorld makes a point to help children with reading comprehension along with other early reading skills. Here's a link to a description of what WordWorld can teach your child.
“Take this quiz to check your child's vocabulary.”
How's Your Child's Vocabulary?
Take this five question quiz.
If you answer less than four questions correctly, you may want to find ways to teach vocabulary.
VOCABULARY
Reading Rockets Target the Problem! Vocabulary is a great source to learn ways to help a reader with vocabulary.
“Take this quiz to check your child's fluency.”
How's Your Child's Fluency
Take this five question quiz.
If you answer less than four questions correctly, look for ways to improve your child's fluency.
FLUENCY
A reader with strong fluency skills quickly recognizes words, reads like a person speaks, and focuses on meaning. Reading Rockets Target the Problem! Fluency gives a good definition of fluency and shares ways to improve a child's fluency. “Take this quiz to check your child's decoding.”
How's Your Child's Decoding?
Take this five question quiz.
If you answer at least four questions correctly, your child has a good start on decoding. You may want to check out ways to teach decoding skills anyway.
If your child is struggling with reading and has passed this decoding quiz, you may want to start teaching another reading skill before working more in the area of decoding.
DECODING
Decoding involves reading words by using sounds, spelling patterns, phonics, and knowledge of phonics rule exceptions.Decoding words takes a lot of effort and time in the beginning stages of reading. Listening to a child learning to read requires patience. Target the Problem! Word Decoding and Phonics explains what reading is like for a beginning reader trying to get good at sounding out words. You'll also find ways to teach decoding in the Target the Problem section at Reading Rockets. Click on the highlighted link to access this information.
Smooth reading will not happen until decoding becomes automatic. It takes time and practice for a child to decode words quickly. Your child will stumble over words when learning to decode. Think of the beginning stages of reading as a child learning to walk.
Keep reading to find ways I share to teach a child decoding skills.
“Teach me sounds.”
Learning letter to sound relationships will help a child sound out words.
Click on the picture to purchase this cute stuffed animal.
Letter to Sound Relationships
After a child knows the alphabet and the sounds letters can make, there are still a few letter combinations you can teach. I suggest you start by teaching a few letter combinations at a time. These letter combinations can be taught while you read books to your child. Stop and point out a few letters and letter combinations. Break the word apart by individual sounds with your voice. You can draw attention to special letters by pointing them out, finger framing, or underlining the letters with Wikki Stix
“Teach me patterns.”
Learning spelling patterns will help a child sound out words.
Click on the picture to purchase this cute stuffed animal.
Spelling Patterns
Watch these two short videos.
All About Spelling!
This book is fun and useful! It will give you what you need to teach spelling patterns.
Painless Spelling (Barron's Painless)
Amazon Price: $0.99 (as of 02/23/2012)
This book is fun, educational, and effective. I hope you give it a try!
“Teach me phonics.”
Learning phonics rules will help a child sound out words.
Click on the picture to purchase this cute stuffed animal.
Phonics Rules
Children who read words by sight are not reading. I think of sight words as training wheels for reading. An emergent reader needs the knowledge of a few sight words to begin reading simple stories. As stories get harder a child needs to be able to sound out words. I wrote another lens called Teach a Child to Read with Phonics. You will find helpful information there to teach phonics.
“Teach me phonics rule exceptions.”
Learning rule exceptions will help a child sound out words.
Click on the picture to purchase this cute stuffed animal.
Rule Exceptions
1. You can sometimes change the sound of a vowel in a word.
2. Sometimes letters work together to make new sounds.
3. Some letters will be silent.
4. Extra consonant sounds are not added or changed.
Many people think words with the schwa sound are sight words that can't be sounded out. The schwa sound is a very common sound and should be taught to beginning readers.
There are some CVC words that have a long vowel sound instead of the expected short vowel sound, but it is easy to teach these words as a group.
old, ild, ind
English language words don't end in the letter v. Words ending with the letters ve could have a short or long vowel sound. Words ending in ve are the biggest silent e rule breakers. The words come and some break the silent e rule too.
The ed ending in some words are tricky for beginning readers. You can use the words spotted, striped, and starred to teach the three sounds ed endings can make.
Find DECODING Posts from my Beginning Reading Help blog
- Use Magnetic Letters to Decode Words Before Reading a Book
- See how teaching a child to decode few words before reading a book can be helpful.
- Teach Phonics Before Sight Words
- Find some simple phonics rules with example words on this post.
- Help a Child Learn High Frequency Words Using Related Phonics Rules
- Find free flashcards to print and cut to teach reading words with phonics rules.
- Learning Letters
- Find free online resources to teach letters and letter sounds.
- Teach a Child to Read and Spell Early
- Find simple words to teach a young child with related phonics rules.
- Teach Blends with Magnetic Letters
- Learning to blend letters quickly helps a reader sound out words quickly.
- Blend Sounds Using Body-coda
- Teach a child to blend sounds in a word through the first vowel sound.
- Long Vowel Sound at the End of a Word or Syllable
- This post shows some words that follow the CV phonics rule.
- Teach Two Common Short Vowel Sound Rules
- This post shows some words that follow the VC and CVC phonics rules.
Review
Teach decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension if needed.
Have a lot of books at your child's reading level.
Have your child reread books.
Listen to your child read and read to your child everyday.
Give your child time to combine reading skills.
The Sky's the Limit!
Teaching your child to read can be one of the best experiences of your life!
Books to Help You Teach Reading Skills
Books to Develop Vocabulary in Young Children
These books are great for reading practice too!
I hope you found ways to teach reading on this lens!
My name is Michelle Breum. I'm a certified elementary teacher not currently working in a classroom. I'm sharing ways for parents to become their children's best teachers and raising my three children.
A child who struggles with reading is having trouble with at least one reading skill or hasn't learned to combine reading skills.Check out my website. Parent and Child Reading Assistance You can contact me through email to ask me questions about teaching reading.
The National Reading Panel 2000 report outlines phonological awareness as an important pre-reading skill that many struggling readers have not learned. If a child is having trouble sounding out words, try checking phonological awareness first. Once a child has a grasp on phonological awareness, a child needs practice combining reading skills while reading good books.
Parents who read early and often to a child build the foundations for all the thought processes necessary to read. Make reading aloud to your children part of your daily routine. Continue reading to your children even after they can read themselves.
Please save and share this lens if you found some useful ideas to teach reading.
My Other Lenses Related to Teaching Reading
Was this lens helpful?
Do you have any questions about teaching reading I can answer here or on another lens?
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ThomasJ4
Sep 9, 2011 @ 11:46 pm | delete
- Reading books is an extremely important issue; I believe it is greatly beneficial for all kids to read.
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lbrummer
Aug 30, 2011 @ 5:47 pm | delete
- This is a very good lens with lots of important information. You did a great job putting this lens together.
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TheTravelGal
Apr 12, 2011 @ 7:09 am | delete
- This is a wonderful lens full of great resources. the quizzes are great, it would have been nice to be able to do them more then once, one for each child, but what the heck.
Helpful lens, thanks a lot.
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pacrapacma
May 16, 2011 @ 12:35 pm | delete
- You may be able to take the quiz more than once if you refresh the page.
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TamaraKajari
Apr 10, 2011 @ 12:37 pm | delete
- Michelle this was such a great and resourceful lens! I'm thrilled about my girls when I see how they like reading, especially my younger one (8). I published a lens the other day about Toot and Puddle picture books my daughter loves so I'm lensrolling this lens to it :)
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by pacrapacma
Helping a child become a successful reader is an amazing experience. I'd like to share my knowledge with parents, so more parents can feel this joy!... more »
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Beginning Reading Help
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byDry-Erase Magnetic Easel for Magnetic Letter Work
Little Red Tool Box: Magnetic Tabletop Learning Easel
Amazon Price: $14.51 (as of 02/23/2012)
Magnetic Letters
Learning Resources Soft Magnetic Letters, Lowercase
Amazon Price: (as of 02/22/2012)
