Helpful Reading Tips
- Don’t rush your child. Respect your child’s individual rate of development.
- Read to you child daily
- Encourage your child to read for 15 minutes every day. Pick a time of day that works best for your child and create a comfortable space to read.
- Let your child choose books he/she is interested in reading.
- Read to your child daily. Older siblings can be involved in reading to younger brothers or sisters. Talk about the books you read together.
- Have a quiet reading time when your whole family reads. It is good modelling for your child to see you read novels, newspapers and magazines.
- Use everyday activities to teach reading. For example, your child can help you read grocery lists, recipes, catalogues, food containers and mail.
- Take your child to visit the public library.
- Build a home library with your child.
- Make reading fun!
Good Readers
- Use the picture clues – Pictures support the story and provide the reader with important information.
- Think about what they are reading - Reading should make sense; it is not just sounding out the words. The words together should communicate an idea to the reader.
- Listen to how the words sound – Listen to the beginning, middle and ending sounds of the word and then guess the difficult word. Say the word in the sentence to see if it sounds right.
- Look for little words inside big words – Hidden words help the reader pronounce and identify the larger unfamiliar word.
- Search and listen for similarities – Do words rhyme or have similar letter patterns?
- Sound words out - Sound out the first letter of an unfamiliar word and then continue reading the rest of the sentence. The word will often pop into the reader’s head.
- Backtrack and read again when the words do not make sense – Rereading helps good readers to remember what they are reading and helps them to predict a word that could fit in the sentence. When good readers read the sentence again they may notice clues they missed the first time.
- Skip over a difficult word and read on – By reading to the end of the sentence a good reader can often figure out the unfamiliar word. It is a good idea to go back and read the whole sentence again to see that it makes sense and sounds right.
- Ask questions and make predictions – Good readers read to get answers to their questions and to find out if their predictions are right
Helpful Links:
This section is for helpful links for parents. We will continue to add in new resources as we find them:
