Improve Reading

Reading can be improved by making connections with material, building fluency, and understanding meaning. The right approach can lead to improvement.

By Anne Becker Schwartzberg

Improve reading: Ask Questions Ask your kids questions about their reading to improve reading. Questions promote critical thinking and lead to lively conversations about plot, character, and themes.

Improve reading: Make a “Mind Movie” To help improve reading comprehension, ask your child to visualize what’s happening in the text and describe it as she would a movie. Making a “movie in your mind” helps children makes sense of and retain what they’ve read.

Improve reading: Create New Endings Discussing alternative story outcomes is a fun way to help children improve reading by using their imagination and inference skills. After you and your child finish reading a book have him create a different ending or the next story in a series.

Now Hear This Improve your child’s reading by reading aloud to him every day. Listening to reading helps kids use and understand language more easily, but you don’t have to be the full-time reader in the house. Big brothers and sisters often love to read to their siblings. Exciting alternatives to the standard read-aloud can be also found on the Web and in audio books. Just know your child benefits even more by having the book in front of them as it is read.

Add Variety Children improve reading by practicing with a wide variety of reading material, including magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. Improve reading opportunities by having reference books, poetry, and picture books all around the house.

Re-reading is Re-warding One of the best ways to improve reading is by re-reading. Re-reading helps children further clarify the meaning behind the words. Have your child practice reading or re-reading each day for at least 15 minutes to improve reading.

Follow the Leader Like ducklings, your kids will live by your example. Set aside family reading time, become familiar with books that will interest your kids, visit the library and get excited about new arrivals, and take books wherever you go to inspire and improve reading. Remember that there’s more to read than just books; celebrate reading everything with your child, including signs, shopping lists, advertisements, recipes, grocery items, brochures, and directions. There’s no such thing as too much reading!