Reading happens in various stages throughout a child’s growth and development, and it varies from child to child. Therefore, it is more important to foster your child’s development and interest in reading than it is to focus on the reading level of your child or what they are reading.
TIPS TO HELP YOU READ WITH YOUR CHILD THIS SUMMER:
- Read new words, material, or stories that capture your child’s interest(s).
- Read riddles or sing songs with them.
- Help your child read a newspaper story and then discuss it with them.
- Expose your child to as many authors, texts, and books as possible.
- Watch your child read, and observe their reaction to the text.
- Allow your child to read at their own pace, and in their own way.
- Read together and/or to each other, and have a discussion about what you are reading.
- Engage your child with the words/text/book by discussing the nuance of the language.
- Ask your child questions about what they are reading – this is a great way to see how your child is reading and what they are picking up from the text.
- Connect the story to other ideas or interests to help stimulate thinking skills that most enhance literacy.
- Provide real world connections to what they are reading to help their minds continue to grow and expand.
- Model good reading behavior. It is just as critical for children to read as it is for them to see their parents read. When children see their parents read for pleasure, it makes reading seem like less of a chore.
- Check out the Jeanne Chall Reading Lab webpage via Harvard’s Graduate School of Education website for great tips on language and literacy. Dr. Jeanne Chall was my mentor and trainer when I was a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. I utilize her approach to reading with all of my clients at Ivy Prep. She remains a great source of inspiration to me and the work I do.
Engaging and interacting with your child when they read allows them to not only develop a connection with the books they read – and with you! – but also to the rest of the world. Books provide us with meaningful context and understanding of life. We shouldn’t be limiting our perspective of the world with narrow, leveled readers, but developing and expanding it with books that help us grow, and challenge us, as readers, and as humans.