Tips for working with your child!
1. Read to your child every day!!
2.
Discuss the story with your child asking him/her to tell you the main characters, the problem, the setting and the solution.
3. Remind your child of these tips when he/she gets stuck on a word:
a. Start
the word--looking at the beginning sound
b. Think about what makes sense
c. Look all the way
through the word
d. Look at the pictures
e. Go back and read it again
4.
Have fun with reading! Reading should be an enjoyable time for all!!
5. Point out words to your
child in life situations--at the store, on signs or billboards, etc.
6. For older students
(3-5) have them read the newspaper. Find articles of interest to them. When they are done reading, ask them to
summarize to you what they read. Discuss any words that they do not know the meaning of.
Here
are the handouts from our Parent Reading Workshop.
What To Do Before, During, and After Reading
With Your Child
BEFORE READING:
1. Talk about the cover, the title, look at all the pictures.
2. Ask your child what he/she thinks the book will be about and why.
3. Go through
the book and ask your child if he/she can find any sight words—play I spy a sight word (you say a word, they find it).
4. Ask your child what he/she already knows about this topic (this is especially important for non-fiction
material).
DURING READING:
1. If your child says a word that is wrong, stop him/her and
ask” Does that sound right, or does that make sense, or try that again”.
2. After each
page, ask your child to tell you what happened in the story.
3. If your child has struggled with a
page, have him/her reread the page. Rereading helps with fluency.
4. With younger students, have
your child read a page, then you read a page, etc.
5. For students who are not reading yet, you read
the book, pointing out very basic sight words, asking them to find a word that starts with a particular sound and have them
predict what will happen next.
6. If your child struggles on a word, have him/her skip the word, read
on, and then go back to the word to see if they can figure out the word based on the rest of the sentence.
AFTER
READING:
1. Ask some basic story element questions:
a. Who were the main characters?
b. What was the setting (where the story took place).
c. What was the problem or
main event in the story?
d. How was the problem solved/how did the story end?
2.
How does this story relate to child’s life?
3. Have your child retell the story in his/her own
words.
4. Ask your child if his/her predictions were correct.
Word Work:
Pre-K-2nd
1. Notice “print” everywhere—road signs, food packages, magazines,
T.V., books, newspapers, etc.
2. For younger students, play rhyming game-you say a word, they say a
word that rhymes. Or, change the beginning sound—for example “if I take the h away from hop and add the
sounds “st” to the beginning, what word do I have. This is all auditory.
3. Use magnetic
letters and a cookie sheet to make words and word families. Word families are all the words that have the same middle
and ending—so hat, cat, mat, sat are in the same word family, as well as hop, stop, pop, crop.
4.
Sight word flashcards—this should be done daily in grades
1 and 2.
5. Model reading
by reading to your child every day.
Talk about the words on the pages and discuss the story. Make
it a fun and enjoyable time together.
