Reading With Your Child

This guest post comes from Carolyn Wilhelm of the Wise Owl Factory.

Here are some tips to help parents understand how best to use the nightly reading time at home.

1. Do not skip this time. A half hour once every week does not begin to help as much as a few minutes each day. The long-term effects of skipping nightly reading homework are well established, as described in this article by Edudemic. This fact is well known by teachers who have studied reading pedagogy, and parents can easily find the research online if they need to be convinced.

2. Choose the right time. Always try to find a time when your child will cooperate, when neither of you are pushing to just finish the homework. The best time might not be right after school as some play time may be needed first, and certainly just before bed is not opportune. Find a time that works for you and your family.

3. Sit side by side with your child. This is not the time to iron or catch up on email. Teachers know what parents are doing during the nightly reading time, if the child starts making up the story as he or she reads aloud to the teacher. This is a clue the parent isn’t watching the words. Children want to please adults and will try their best to sound knowledgeable while reading. If the assignment is to read silently, actually sit by your child and read silently at the same time. Elbow to elbow and knee to knee is the best sitting position.

4. At the emergent level (when the child is learning sight words, short vowels, and mostly individual letter sounds), allow the child to use all the resources of the book, including pictures. Parents sometimes tell me they are proud of the fact they covered the pictures in emergent readers to force the child to read the “big” words. At this point in early reading, it is not possible to read the big words. The point of emergent readers is to learn sight words, use left to right reading orientation, and realize each word is separate, to utilize the pictures, and to experience reading success. Books that say things such as, “I like the ball, I like the car, I like the bird” are only helping reinforce the words I and like.

5. Do not “tell” words at the developing level as the child reads. When the child has progressed from the emergent level to the developing level (learning letter blends, long vowels, and word solving strategies), he or she should be able to stop pointing to words. When children stop dead in the middle of a sentence or paragraph when reading to the teacher, the teacher knows the parents are trying to help by telling the words. Instead, help the child learn to rely on word solving strategies outlined at the end of this blog post.

6. Do not stop reading aloud to your child. It is a mistake to think that now the child can read on his or her own, the parent is out of the picture. Reading aloud to children should continue through grade four or higher. Why? Adults can read such a great variety of stories and expose children to a huge amount of vocabulary that children cannot access on their own. Children need to be reminded that reading is interesting.

7. Discuss what was read. Help your child understand the point of reading is to understand, not just “word call.”