Supporting your child’s reading skills

General guidelines

Kids learn best when they feel confident, successful, and supported. Here are ways you can help them:

• Notice your child’s strengths –Kids have strengths in physical skills, art, helping others and being a good friend. Look for what your child does well and let them know you see them doing well.  
• Notice your child’s successes – Kids need to hear what they are doing well. Share with them areas they could improve. Start at the level where your child has success. Celebrate their successes. This may mean praising their reading of a word they had struggled to sound out.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a word their peers have already been reading.
• Talk to your child’s teacher – Kids feel supported when they see their parents and teachers working together. 

Ways to build reading skills

Sounding out words (Decoding skills) 

• Read aloud to your child daily or often as you can.
• Pick a few letters to practice with your child. When reviewing them, name the letters. Practice the sound each of the letters make. 
• Play rhyming games with your child or name a word. Ask them to think of other words that start with the same sound. For example, find words that rhyme with two. This could be shoe, blue, and crew. 
• Make a game of changing the beginning or ending sound of words to make silly words. For example, change the first sound in the word cat to make jat, gat, and tat. 
• Don’t worry about your child’s reading speed. Focus on reading words correctly. This is most important when your child is first learning to read. 
• Try to pick out books that interest your child. Try to give your child books where they can easily read most of the words. If you are unsure of your child’s reading level, ask their teacher. 
• Have your child read out loud to you. If you notice them struggling to sound out a word, help them break it down to read it. It is ok to take turns reading pages with your child. 
• Make flashcards with sight words written on them. Turn them into a fun game, like Go Fish. 

Fluency (reading speed)

• Read books to your child. Try to read to them at the speed you would like them to read. Model fluent reading of books or paragraphs to your child. Then have your child read the words as you did. 
• There are two goals for a child. 
  • Increase their reading speed. 
  • Increase the number of words they read correctly. 
    • Have your child reread books or parts of books. Each time they read, write down the words they misread. Use a timer to see how long it took to read those words. This is their reading speed.
    • Another option is to count the number of words your child reads correctly within one minute. Keep track of this. The number should increase over time.

Understanding

• Help your child to make links between what they already know and what they are reading.
• When reading with your child, pause and ask questions. Ask things like, “What do you think will happen next?” “How do you think that character is feeling?” “What would you do?”
• There are tools to help your child understand what they are reading. One of these tools is called a graphic organizer. Organizers can be found at https://www.understood.org/en/articles/graphic-organizers-for-reading 
• Help your child increase the number of words they know. This is called vocabulary. 
  • Talk with them often about different topics.  
  • Try to include new words when talking with them. 
  • Introduce a word of the day.

Reading apps

Reading apps help your child practice reading skills they are learning in school. They may help to build your child's reading skills.  

Preschool and early grade school

• PBS Kids www.pbskids.org
• Blending Board  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blending-board/id1521114657 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flutter_android.blendingboardapp&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1 
• Poio https://poio.com/ 
• Bob Books https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bob-books-reading-magic-1/id405995002 
  

Grade school

• Starfall www.Starfall.com
• Reading Rockets https://www.readingrockets.org/literacy-home 

You can see a listing of learning apps and ratings here: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ 

Reading interventions

Interventions support children's reading skills. 

• Evidenced based Intervention Network https://ruralsmh.com/attention-and-academic-issues/ 
• Intervention Central https://www.interventioncentral.org/response-to-intervention 
• What Works Clearinghouse  https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguides