How to help my child read

Are you worried about the large number of people you meet who rarely read for pleasure? Do you want your child to love reading and develop a lifelong passion for it? Are you concerned about school reading programs that emphasize phonics and sight words, but not comprehension? You want to know how to help your child read?

If you are nodding your head to these questions, you are the perfect candidate for teaching your children to read. In this Psychology-Online article we show you how to teach your child to read.

Index

1. My child is not learning to read: what do I do?
2. Step 2: Learn the letters to help a child read
3. Step 3: Mix sounds
4. Step 4: Start entering keywords
5. Step 5: Work with word families
6. Step 6: Phonetic Skills
7. Step 7. Give it a meaning

Unfortunately, too many parents have the misconception that reading should be taught at school and that requires a large amount of material, worksheets, alphabet cards, special books and others resources. Nothing is further from reality. No one is better equipped to teach their children to read than their own parents. If you want

Step 1: Pre-Reading Behaviors

There are activities that are nothing like reading, but that pave the way for a child to become a good reader. These pre-reading behaviors can appear spontaneously through the child's own observation and mimicry or an adult can encourage them.

• Look for and encourage the following: Look at signs, labels, packaging, etc. Children can know that a sign says “Cafeteria” before they can read the letters.
• Rhyme awareness
• Concepts about printing: Does the child know where it is up in a book? Do you have the feeling that the pages turn one at a time and always in the same direction? As you read, point to the words so they can see that you are reading from left to right.

When a child demonstrates these behaviors and skills alongside others, he may be ready to learn to read. If not, work on activities like these into your daily routine to help steer them in the right direction.

Keep going reading aloud to him. If children learn that reading is an enjoyable experience through reading aloud, they will be motivated to learn the skill on their own.

Obvious, right? But you may be surprised by the following question about learning letters:

The letters they do not have to be taught in alphabetical order. Think about it: If you taught the letters a, m, t, and s, the child can start reading a few simple words right away and that is very exciting for them. The rapid advances like that they keep the kids motivated and lintrinsic motivation it is very important in these moments of its growth.

Mastering a single letter involves two different skills: Visually identifying the letter and memorizing the sound associated with it. Then there are letters that make more than one sound... but later you will learn that.

Using the senses and movement helps children memorize the letters. Build the letter with clay, draw the letter with your finger on the child's back, associate a movement with the sound of the letter such as jumping and making the sound of the letter s.

A single exposure is not enough. There has to be a lot of memorization to learn all the letters and sounds. Incorporate a lot of review and don't be in a rush.

To know how to help your child read, it is important to follow this step to mix sounds. Going from knowing individual letters to reading words is about mixing the sounds. Try this technique:

• Using a 2- or 3-letter word, point to the letters and say each sound.
• Then start again at the beginning of the word. Slide your finger slowly under the letters as you stretch the sounds and put them together.
• Try to make the child try to do it too.

Advice: Make it simple here. Limit yourself to words in which each letter makes its "normal" sound. Stay away from words where two letters work together to make a new sound.

The words in sight are typically short words that appear very frequently in the text and sometimes do not follow predictable spelling rules. In that case it is better to learn them by heart.

Visual word practice may include flashcards, finding words in books, and playing games on the computer.

There are many types of learning strategiesHowever, one of my favorite ways to practice sight words is through the use of patterned or predictable text. These are books in which each sentence is the same, except for one word that can be deduced with the help of a drawing. This helps them a lot.

You will get a ton of benefits if you spend time with word families. Teach children that if they can read a word that contains -an, they can read other words that contain those two letters. Working with word families you learn better.

Learning the individual sounds of the letters is just a foundation. When introducing phonetic patterns this sequence can be followed:

• Mixes: Two letters that are often together in words, both letter sounds can be heard. Ex: bl
• Digraphies: Two letters that make a new sound
• Stuck sounds: These are a mix, but they are 3 letters and they come at the end of a word.

There are many more phonetic patterns and rules, but these are some things that can be worked on at first. If you want to know how language is acquired through learning, we recommend the following article on Noam Chomsky and the theory of language.

It means that as a child begins to read longer sentences and texts, he should be able to get some meaning out of it. They must have an idea of ​​what is happening in the story or what the author wants them to know.

The creation of meaning must be interwoven as soon as the child begins to read sentences. Help the child make sense of it:

• asking questions about what they just read.
• Encouraging them to reread if they did not understand what the author was saying.
• Show your own reactions to the text

What is the point of learning to read if you are not enjoying a story, learning something new, or being exposed to a different way of looking at things?

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to How to help my child read, we recommend that you enter our category of Education and study skills.