Helping your child learn to read

This is a Book Week guest post from Suzanne at Ghostwritermummy. Suzanne is a teacher and has some excellent tips on helping children learn to read.

Children are never too young to enjoy the gift of reading. Whether it is listening to a story or reading it for themselves, books provide an endless source of wonder, excitement, education and fantasy and can be a lifelong friend, if treated right. As a teacher, I know how wonderful it can be for a child to discover that they can read and I have watched slow, unconfident readers suddenly find their literary feet and begin to devour book after book filled with stories, poems, facts and jokes. As a child, my nose was always in a book. I would read the back of cereal boxes at the breakfast table, signposts in the car whilst on journeys, newspapers, comics and magazines. My mum would buy me a book when we went to Sainsbury’s and return it at the checkout as I had consumed it cover to cover by the time the weekly shop was done. I love books. But how did I learn to read?

This question was put to me when I started teacher training and a distant memory sprung to mind. I checked with my mum. Yes. Ever the teacher, she had left notes and labels all around the house to help us learn to read. Bed. Window. Door. Cupboard. Everything had a label and she swears this was how we started to read and recognise words. It’s a good trick, but it’s not the only way we can help our kids to read. Here are my top tips:

• Kids need models. Read. Let your children see you enjoy books or other reading matter. Let them copy your love for books and reading.
• Read to your children. Bedtime stories are so important for social development and for fostering a love of reading and listening to stories. Make sure dad joins in too. Studies have shown that mums tend to do the bedtime story and as a result, boys are less likely to enjoy reading than girls. Incidentally, boys are also more likely to enjoy non-fiction books as they tend to see dads reading newspapers.
• Join a library as soon as you can. Let your child actively choose books that appeal to them. Let them browse the bookshelf and immerse themselves in books. Lots of libraries also have story telling sessions that can bring books to life!
• Sing with your children. Songs help to develop vocabulary and a sense of rhythm which is essential for reading aloud with expression. Songs like the alphabet song help children to learn their letters too.
• Play alphabet games such as eye-spy, to help children think about words and their initial sounds. This helps with word recognition.
• When your child knows their letters, start looking at their sounds. There are plenty of phonics games around and the electronic ones are brilliant. Flashcards with sounds and pictures work really well and you can put actions to them to help your child remember them.

When your child has learnt letters and sounds, you can start to introduce flashcards with words on them and this is where labelling your house can be really effective. I will always remember the day that my daughter learnt to read the word ‘window’ because she knew the letter ‘w’, the label was stuck on the window and it had a picture of a window on it too! She was so happy to know a big word! Phonics is really the only way that a child can actually learn to read so all the early work playing with letters and sounds sets the foundation for this.

I have one last, really important tip in helping children learn to read: DON’T push them. Let your child develop at their own pace. Let them enjoy books and listening to stories before they try to read themselves. Children love repetition and will often want the same story over and over. That’s fine- your child will probably end up ‘reading’ a story to you this way. Ask lots of questions to make sure the comprehension is there. But really, don’t sweat it. My daughter started school knowing her letters and most of her sounds (but not digraphs such as sh, ch, etc) but she couldn’t read. She did have a love of reading though and now, in year one, she is a keen, confident and happy reader.

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