Helping Your Child With Reading

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Here are some things you can try at home to help your child improve reading skills:

1. Let your child see you reading and talk with enthusiasm about books.

2. Read with your child, maybe in a comfy chair or with a stuffy.

3. Develop letter and sound recognition:

   • Play word games that focus on letter sounds, like "I Spy" using beginning sounds ("I spy something that starts with /s/!").​

   • Use magnetic letters or letter tiles to build and manipulate simple words, reinforcing sound-letter connections.

   • Help your child recognize word patterns, such as rhyming words or common letter combinations (e.g., "sh," "th," "ing").

4. Work on decoding skills:​

   • Model sounding out words slowly and then blending the sounds together (e.g., "c-a-t... cat!").​

   • Encourage your child to sound out words rather than guessing from pictures or context.

5. Ask your child questions about what he or she is reading:

   • ​What is the story about?

   • Tell me about the characters in the story?

   • What do you like about the story? What would you change?

   • What do you think will happen next? Why?

   • What have you learned?

6. Offer a variety of reading materials; fictional stories, factual books, comics, graphic novels, poems, online stories, joke books, magazines, etc.

7. Browse for reading materials at the library or in bookstores.

8. Respond to a text:

   • Draw a picture, comic or alternate cover page.

   • ​​Write a letter to a character, a journal entry by a character or sequel story.

   • Create a crossword puzzle, word search or book review.