Reading With Your Kids A parent’s guide to helping your child with reading at home.

Choosing the Right Books 'Nothing succeeds like success'. Until your child has built up his or her confidence, it is better to keep to easier books. Struggling with a book with many unknown words is pointless. Flow is lost, text cannot be understood and children can easily become reluctant readers.

Point to the Words When reading a book where the print is large, point word by word as you read- or have the child point as they read. This will help the child learn that reading goes from left to right and understand that the word he or she says is the word he or she sees.

Using Your Letter Sounds Correctly  Letter sounds should not have any extra sounds attached to them  Example of continuous sounds: sf l m n y  Example of Stop sounds: b p c t d

How to Sound Out A Word When sounding out a word, the sounds need to be as connected as possible – “Keep your motors running” – Example: f-a-n s -a -t m-e-n s-i-t When there is a “stop sound” first, attach it to the next vowel sound right away. – Example: ca- t te- n pi- n to- p

Helping your child take spoken words apart and put them together.  Help your child separate the sounds in words  Listen for beginning and ending sounds  Put separate sounds together.

Sight Words / Phonetic Words Phonetic Words can be sounded out – Example: sit man lip top can bun Sight Words must be memorized – Example: they said people their – Encourage the use of first and last letter – Encourage the use of pictures – Tell your child the word – have them repeat it

When to Correct? Don't correct too quickly. If your child makes an error suggest having another go, searching the pictures for a clue, sounding out the first letter or reading on before you 'tell' the problem word. Especially encourage the use of sounding out for phonetic words

How to Correct?  Building reading accuracy.  As your child is reading aloud, point out words he missed and help him read words correctly.  If you stop to focus on a word, have your child reread the whole sentence to be sure he understands the meaning.

Increasing Vocabulary Review new or unusual vocabulary words prior to reading the story or passage – Say the word – Ask kids to repeat the word Give examples, synonyms, or show pictures for those words Discuss / ask questions about new words. – Example: "This big house is called a palace. Who do you think lives in a palace?"

How to Increase Comprehension  Talk with your child about what she is reading.  Talk about what happened in a story.  Ask your child to retell the story.  Ask about the characters, places, and events that took place.  Encourage reading the story or passage more than once.  Talk about new or unusual words.

Questions? Brenda Schell – –