Engaging your child's reading at home is critical for their literacy development.  

Engage in: joint reading, drawing, singing, storytelling, reciting, game playing, and rhyming.  When joint reading, you and your child take turns reading parts of a book. When reading, ask her to connect to the story.  Have her tell you more about what she is thinking.  You can use her interests to choose books. Give positive feedback and ask open-ended questions during joint reading to boost her interest and critical thinking skills.

For young children, nursery rhymes are especially helpful for language and early literacy development.  Play audiobooks or read aloud at home to increase the amount of language your child hears. Hang different kinds of print around your house.  Label objects in your home. This shows the importance of language, reading, and writing. Help your child build background knowledge on a topic.  Talk about everyday experiences, show your child pictures, and tell her stories.

For older children, play word games, talk about word meanings, and point out interesting or new words when reading together. Ask questions before, during, and after reading aloud. This can help your child focus attention on the ideas in the story. Before reading, look at the book cover and talk about what might happen in the story. During reading, ask what questions he has about the story. After reading, talk about what happened.  Ask your child to sum it up and relate the story to what he already knows or has experienced.

If you use a different language at home, speak and read to your child in that language. This can help grow his vocabulary and make connections at school. It can also increase his curiosity and readiness to learn at school. Learning opportunities in a home language will help literacy learning in English.

Retrieved from https://www.improvingliteracy.org 

Contact: lwhale@psdschools.org