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Being a parent means you’re your child’s first teacher – it also means you can help your child learn to read!
Learning to read is closely linked with language growth and the best way to develop your child’s language and reading abilities is to develop an interest and a positive attitude to reading in a relaxed home environment.
It is important not to place any demands on a child to develop any specific reading skills prior to entering school. At first we are most concerned with developing a positive attitude and love of reading. As a parent you can make reading fun!
The ‘read-to’ and ‘read-with’ child has a better chance of being a good reader. He or she usually develops a positive attitude to reading, gains essential concepts about print, and has a large vocabulary and a sense of language use and structure. These are important elements for school to build upon. Where they are lacking, the school must first establish them before they can teach a child to read.
Learning to read isn’t easy, but it can be fun! The only short cuts to successful reading are plenty of enjoyable experiences with reading and patience.
Parents can develop children’s confidence in their own abilities by providing genuine praise for achievement, supporting their child in changing situations and offering understanding in difficult ones.
Our world is filled with words so it is easy to use the environment around us as a way to teach a child how to read.
Using a positive mindset about reading, books, magazines and newspapers will help promote reading and literature in a household and can subsequently lead to a child wanting to engage with reading.
Teaching your child to read can also come from simple day-to-day activities.
You can use meal time, tv time and even a drive in the car to help kick start an interested in reading.
Writing engages reading and literacy skills. Engaging words, writing sentences and constructing stories will help your child build a love for words in their own time and pace.
Play-based learning is a great way to help your child learn to read. Promoting play-based learning has many benefits and can help develop many different skills in your chuild.
Many of the familiar “old fashioned” parlour games (e.g. Snap, Snakes and Ladders, Dominoes, etc.) nursery stories and rhymes, help children develop visual and auditory discrimination, motor control, memory, sequencing, and logic. Toys children enjoy most are useful for a variety of purposes which stimulate the imagination. They need not be currently fashionable.
Supporting a child to read is one of the most rewarding things a parent can do. Learn how it can benefit your child.
Simple tips and ideas to encourage children and teens to continue reading during the school holidays.
A helpful guide for teachers and parents to understand the Systematic Synthetic Phonics reading approach.
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