Incredibly Effective Ways to Increase Your Child’s Reading Ability

Reading is an incredibly crucial part of your child’s emotional and intellectual development. Strong reading skills set your child up for success later in life in many a ways.

Your child will learn and acquire new words and improve both their language association skills and the fundamentals of language

Reading increases your child’s power to learn across all subjects, not just in language and reading

Proceeding to hear and reading stories helps your child to master concepts of logic, judgement, and cause and effect relationships

Reading helps your child to deepen their ability to concentrate and develop a longer attention span.

Many parents read stories to their children when they are too young to read for themselves. As your children get older, ingraining a love of reading can be crucial to their language skills, independence, and emotional development.

As your child is learning to read, or if they struggle with reading on their own, there are many a things that you as a parent can do to help improve their abilities.

Try these 7 effective ways to increase your child’s reading skills.

1.Reading Time

Research shows that setting aside time daily to read to and with your child can substantially increase their reading abilities in many areas, including:

Reading comprehension

Vocabulary skills

Learning to recognise words that they already know

Learning to sound out unfamiliar words

In a way if your child has not yet learned to read, incorporating a daily story time routine into their schedule will instil the importance of reading that they will hopefully continue to appreciate as they learn to read on their own.

You will find that as your child does learn to read on their own, you can continue your daily or nightly story time together.Shift the reading responsibilities gradually to your child so that they are reading to you instead of the other way around. I can’t believe I am saying this it will encourage them to read without your assistance, but allow them to do so in an environment where you are still able to help them to decipher unfamiliar or difficult words.

2. Regularity

You will learn that there are two very effective ways to encourage your child to read regularly. One is to make books accessible everywhere in your home. Use the time to lure your child into stories by having books on shelves or in baskets in rooms throughout your home.

No matter how having books at their reading level available in the car, in the bathroom, next to their bed, and even in the living room next to the TV will signal to your child that reading is important and easily accessible.

Another way to boost and encourage your child to read is to lead by example.

Parents are the child’s ultimate role models and the child is likely going to emulate the behaviour that they display. When your child sees you reading before bed every night then they are more likely to do the same. So when your child sees you reading for your own pleasure, they will see firsthand that reading is about enjoyment and not just about learning.

3. Acknowledging books that your child likes

When a child appears to be uninterested in reading, it may not be because they do not like to read. However the source of the problem could simply be that they do not like to read the books that they have.

Finding the right genre or type of story could be the key to finally sparking your child’s interest.

It should be that you should try exposing your child to many different types of stories. The more interested your child is in the subject matter exclusively in inside of a book, the more excited they will be to read it.

Mysteries, science fiction, and adventure stories are especially popular with young boys and girls with adventurous imaginations.Lastly if your child is wildly curious about animals, outer space, or construction machines, try providing them with material about those subjects.

4. Out of box examples

There are many ways to encourage but not all reluctant readers can be encouraged to read books. On the other hand there are plenty of other ways to ensure that they continue to read. Your child does not have to open a book to enhance their reading skills – there are plenty and abundant of things to read in the world around them!

Here are a few techniques that you can try to encourage your child to improve and utilise their reading skills:

If your child asks to go see a movie, ask them to look up the movie times for you

If your child loves to help you make dinner, let them select a recipe from a favourite cook book and read the steps to you. (If you are modifying the recipe, this is also a great way to help your child to improve their matching skills!)

Encourage your child to read road signs, weather reports, store hours of operation, or emails from other family members.

Incorporating reading into activities that your child loves and showing them the ways in which reading is integral to their everyday life will encourage them to continue to improve their skills, even if it does not help them to enjoy reading books.

5. Stay involved

Maybe teachers do not always know when your child first begins to fall behind in their reading skills. Some children might be able to mask their difficulties, particularly in group settings, and may be too embarrassed to ask for help even if they know that they need it.

Don’t wait until the minor problem becomes serious to take action. You should continue to stay involved and monitoring your child’s progress on a regular basis can help you to stay ahead of and potential reading issues before they surface.

So you can take the time to read stories with your child, and use those moments to discern whether your child struggles to recognise and sound out words or to use context clues to determine the meaning of any words that they do not know. As your youngster asks questions about the story to see if they are able to comprehend the material.

More than anything if you do feel that your child’s reading skills could be improved, schedule a meeting with their teacher to make them aware of the potential problem and to come up with a solution to make improvements if necessary. It is tempting to say that parents, teachers, and children can all work together to identify learning gaps and make improvements.

6. Never give up

In actuallity with constant attention and care, some struggling readers are able to bring their skills up to a level that is appropriate for their year. Other children may seem to continue to struggle with reading into primary school or beyond.

Most of the strategies in this post are specifically geared to younger children. However if your primary school or secondary school aged child still struggles with reading comprehension, language skills, or spelling and vocabulary, know that there are still resources available to you to help amend their skills.

When Kids Can’t Read – What Teachers Can Do is specifically written for educational professionals, but the strategies contained therein can be useful to you as a parent as well.

This book breaks down reading skills into manageable components, and outlines practical strategies that can be used to strengthen those components. It also helps to identify habits that “dependent readers” (students who are unable to effectively read without assistance) rely on and how to decrease reliance on those habits.

7. Child’s Individuality

This seems like common sense, but as a parent it is easy to allow yourself to be frustrated with your child’s perceived lack of “adequate progress,” even if they are acquiring learning at a perfectly appropriate pace for their age.

It might be that your oldest child could read by age five does not mean that your younger child should be expected to do the same. Each child’s brain is organized and wired differently, and their skillsets will advance and improve at a pace that is specific to the way that they interact with the world.

The components and strategies outlined in this post are largely within your control as a parent. But however, the way that your child’s brain develops is also contingent on factors that you cannot control. Every child develops at a unique pace.

If you doubt remember that your perception that your child is “falling behind” may not be accurate. If your child needs help with their reading skills, work closely with their teacher to monitor their progress and be willing to participate in strategies to improve their skills if necessary.

Above all, remember this: if your child truly does struggle with reading, the best thing that you can do is to assist them as they strive to improve. While if your child feels embarrassed or ashamed of their difficulties then they will be less comfortable asking for help.

Reading is an essential component of your child’s learning and development. Helping them to improve their comprehension, literacy, language, and spelling skills will set them up for future success and prosperity.It can be hard but don’t be afraid to ask for help, but know that there is plenty that you can do on your own to help your child learn and grow.