How Can Parents Help?

1. Encourage your child to read. Keep in mind that they may be frustrated with the process, so you need to motivate them and make it fun! Do not make it a chore.

2. Read to them.

3. Provide your child with books at their independent level. If they seem to be struggling with the words, it is too hard. They should be able to read the material easily to allow for success. There are many lower level books with high interest our there. Here are some web-sites that lists some high/low books:

• High Interest - Low Vocabulary Books
• High Interest Low Reading Level Books
• High Interest /Low Reading Level Books for Middle and High Schoolers
• Tea Leaf Press
• Middle Grades Reading Network High Interest/Low Readability Books

3. Before reading, have your child preview the book. Look at the cover, the back, the chapter titles and have them predict what they think the book is about. Build some background knowledge by relating the topic to something they have experienced or know about.

4. During reading, there are several things you can do:

• Read with your child, if they want you to. Take turns reading every 2 sentences, paragraphs, or pages. This way it won't be so overwhelming for your child and gives you an opportunity to model desired fluency.
• As you are reading, question your child after a few paragraphs to make sure they are comprehending the story. You can use the who? what? when? where? and why? questions, but also ask questions to predict what is about to happen. Also, talk about how it relates to something that happened in their life. For example, when we were reading Brian's Winter, we talked about a time when they were alone in the woods.
• Tell your child to visualize what is happening as they read. I usually tell them to get the movie rolling in their heads.
• Encourage the child to use strategies to read unknown words:
• Use context clues: Use the words in the sentence and the paragraph to help determine what the word is.
• Use any picture clues that are available.
• Use the beginning sound and rimes (the vowel and everything after it). For example: scream - the beginning sound it /scr/ and the rime is /eam/.
• Use decoding skills: Sound out all the letter and letter combinations.
• Build vocabulary by talking about what the words mean.

5. After reading, have your child write about what they have read or tell you orally. Ask them what they think will happen in the next chapter.

So your child still doesn't want to read a book? Pick up a magazine, the newspaper, ask them to read something out of a newsletter….

Every corrective reading lesson that we do has a word attack section. In order for you child to read more fluently, we need to increase the amount of words that they can read automatically. You can help by working on the words that your child is having difficulty with. The following lists are weekly lists of words that the students in my class are having trouble reading. You can help by having your child read the appropriate list at home. If they get it correct, praise them. If they make a mistake, use the SAY IT, SPELL IT, SAY IT WRITE IT strategy. For example, if they read stared as started, say "That word is stared, what word?" "Spell stared." What word?" and then have them write the missed words in a sentence or two. Then practice reading these words in text and writing them in sentences.

Remember to make reading fun and be encouraging!