Teach reading skills and strategies when children are young.
Reading requires both simple and complex thinking. It starts with the ability to recognize and apply letter sounds to form words, and gradually builds to analyzing the information that was read. Teaching reading skills and strategies when children are very young can produce strong and proficient readers for life.
Letter and Word Recognition
Identifying letters and learning their respective sounds are the first steps to putting words together. This skill is started early in kindergarten. Expose young children to a variety of activities to build knowledge of letters and sounds. Play letter and word games online or read out loud to your child to increase skills. Sight words are common words that a student should learn to recognize in text without having to sound them out. Sight words also include words that do not follow traditional letter sounds, such as "could" and "does." Drill these words with flash cards to boost sight word recognition.
Reading Strategies
Use reading strategies to decode letters and words.
Reading strategies assist children who have difficulty decoding words. Look at the picture for hints to figure out a word if there are illustrations in the text. Sound out the word by saying each letter sound from the beginning. Break the word down into smaller portions. Look for parts of the word that are familiar and blend the parts together. Reread the sentence from the beginning and try similar words that would complete the sentence. Skip the word and read on to look for other clues to help decode the letters.
Recall Details and Events
Having a student tell the story in his own words is the best way to determine if he has proficient comprehension of what was read. After summarizing the story in the appropriate sequence of events, the child should be able to discriminate between main ideas and smaller details. The characters, plot and setting should also be included in the summary. Have the student review what he has read at the end of each chapter or after reading a few pages.
Predict Outcomes
Making predictions can help identify possible confusion in the material that is being read. Predictions do not need to be correct, but should relate to the subject of the book. When making predictions about a story, have students read through the table of contents, look at pictures and review the title. Children should be able to make predictions about the outcome of a story before and during reading.
Draw Conclusions
Read to your kids and ask them to predict story events and draw conclusions.
Drawing conclusions requires a high level of thinking. Students must use the information they read plus knowledge from their own experiences to make deductions about the meaning and purpose of text.
