Helping Your Child with Reading

You are your child’s best language teacher.

How you can help your child develop reading and writing skills outside of the classroom.

1. Encourage reading everyday.

· Find ways to encourage your child to read independently. Make sure they have the time and space to devote to reading and that they have plenty of material to read for fun.

· Read together: As you read, stop and discuss:

o Which character they like best and why?

o How would they feel if they were one of the characters?

o What would they do to solve the problems in the story?

o How does the story make them feel?

2. Lead by Example.

· If your child never sees you reading, they’re not likely to pick up a book on their own either. Make time in your day to read and talk to your child about something you’re reading that you enjoy. If you’ve just read an interesting magazine article or the newspaper, tell your child what you learned from it.

· Talk about the news stories you see on television or hear on the radio. By discussing what is happening in the world, you can explain why certain issues are important and share your values with your child.

3. Use Technology to Encourage Reading

· Nothing beats reading a real book, but you can also use technology to your advantage. Use the internet to explore kid-friendly eBooks on topics that interest your child.

4. Find Reasons to Write

· Help your child find useful and fun reasons to write. Begin or continue a journal of good times together – possibly the highlights of a vacation or family time that you’ve shared. You and your child can each make entries and then read through what you have written together.

· Write an explanation of how to do something. For example, how to make a simple snack or dessert or play an instrument or video game and then follow the instructions set out and see what happens.

5. Read Books that Have Been Made into Movies

· Seeing a book come to life on screen is a fun way to motivate your child to read. Start off by reading one of these together and watch the screen adaptations when you’re finished. Talk about the plot, characters and story lines. Ask your child to describe the differences they noticed.

6. Find supplementary material in print or online .

· There are many trade books that can be found fairly cheap at Costco or local dollar stores, some of which are designated for specific grade levels. Find the level that best fits your child and encourage them to practise their skills nightly.

· As well, Language Arts specific websites can be highly engaging.

Essentially, the more exposure your child has to the printed work the more capable they will become!

How to Help Your Child Edit and Revise Their Writing

It can often be difficult to know what strategies to use to help your child produce their best writing. We want to help them recognize errors and fix them, but we can’t do the work for them. Keep in mind that your child’s teacher is looking to assess what your child understands and can do – and it doesn’t have to be perfect. What we can do as parents, is provide lots of opportunities to show kids how to recognize their errors.

Here are a few helpful strategies to think about when editing and revising with your child:

1. Have your child read their work out loud to you. Often, they will hear their own errors, and if not, it’s easy to prompt them with “Wait a second, will you re-read that sentence? That didn’t make sense to me.”

a. Reading out loud also works great for correcting punctuation. Have them read it to you and follow along with them. You can prompt them by saying things like “I just heard you take a breath there, does that mean we might need punctuation?”

b. Alternatively, you can be the one to read it out loud, and emphasize where they have/don’t have punctuation. Hopefully, they will hear that it doesn’t sound the way they want it to.

2. Have your child circle their ending punctuation, and underline their capital letters. Capital letters should always follow ending punctuation. Continue this process:

a. Have them find any proper names in their writing, including the word “I” and do a squiggly line. They should all be capitalized.

3. Checking for spelling: Obviously in the ideal situation, your child could identify which words they think they may have spelled wrong – ask them to do this, and circle those words. But if they answer with “I don’t know” or “I think they’re right” then they need some extra prompting.

a. You can go through their work and circle words they have misspelled. Just don’t correct the words for them! Help them use a dictionary, or talk about some of the tools we use to remember how to spell words.

b. Looking for some extra practice? Keep a list of the words they spelled incorrectly and practice them at home.

4. Integrate writing in your daily life. Here are a few examples of how you can get your child practicing their writing at home:

a. Have them write out the grocery list. This is a great opportunity to practice spelling and penmanship!

b. Have them write a short letter to a friend or relative; thank-you cards are always a good one after holidays or birthdays. This real-life application of writing will help your child see the importance of writing, and they’ll get the satisfaction of writing for a true purpose.

c. Have them write out a to-do list, or even a recipe. Giving clear directions is a huge skill!

To try and reach the needs of as many students as possible, we've created a unique Word Work program where students all learn a pattern or rule, and then choose spelling words that are challenging for them as individuals.