Reading Tips

Ways to help with reading...

These are tips that can help you to help your child! Please share your successes and concerns with your child's teachers. If something isn't working let's work together to figure out other ways to help your child to succeed.

1. Make it fun for your child. Reading should be enjoyable, it is a pasttime that many of us share, we read at the doctor's office, before we fall asleep at night, on a rainy day ... it should be just as fun for them.

2. Find something of high interest. The Bernshausen library and the public libraries are great resources. Taking your child to choose a book at the store is a good incentive or surprise and a great place to find something that your child has a choice in picking a great book.

3. Talk about what they read. Ask them questions (Why do you think...? How did the character ...? What do you think ...? etc.) Make it a conversation that you both want to have.

4. Read to your child a picture storybook (great for vocabulary and predictions through illustrations) or a chapter book or novel. Reading aloud to them provides a fantastic example of fluent reading. You can use funny voices and expression as you read. Or make the reading interesting by speeding up or slowing to make a point of interest.

5. When reading nonfiction, ask what they think they will learn or what do you want to know about. That book may or may not have the answer. If not, try going to another source together to find out - another book, magazine or the Internet.

6. When reading fiction, ask what they think will happen? Talk about if their predictions is what the author wrote. What things in the story make you wonder?

7. For beginning readers, point out rhyming words. Ask them to think of other words that rhyme with it or what other words do you know that look or sound like that word.

8. For beginning readers, talk about the sounds of letters. Have them give you examples of words having a certain letter (make it a game in the grocery store, car, or in your kitchen).

9. Word searches are great ways to keep your child busy at the grocery store. (Have them find a word that has a certain letter or sound or rhymes with. . . For example, I see a word that rhymes with horn. See if they can find the picture or word on the corn can.)

10. Discuss your purpose for reading: Is it for fun or enjoyment, to learn something, to get information, etc. Talk about reasons you read recipes, comics, newspapers, articles, mysteries, etc. They need to know this one.