Ways to Improve Your Child's Reading Skills

Helping Your Child Improve Reading Skills

Determining What Your Child Needs

It's important to determine what areas your child needs help in as a reader. You can talk with your child's teacher, counselor or any other learning professional working with your child to determine what needs to be done. Whether your child is advanced for his or her age or struggling, it's still important to continually practice reading skills.

Determine what kind of reader your child is. Some children don't like reading and have a tendency to avoid it at all costs - these children usually take the most work to help. Other children don't mind reading, but usually only read in order to satisfy requirements for school. Then, there are the children who not only read for school, but also for fun. After you figure out what type of reader your child is, determine if your child needs any kind of physical aid, such as glasses.

Improving Fluency and Comprehension

There are a multitude of ways that you can help your child improve fluency and reading comprehension. Fluency is your child's ability to read smoothly and without pause. To improve fluency, have your child read the same text a number of times. With each pass, he or she should come closer to mastering it. Make a fun activity out of recording your child as he or she reads aloud and then go back over the recording together.

Reading comprehension is the measurement of how well your child's able to understand and interpret a text. To improve comprehension, help your child gain an understanding of how paragraphs and sentences are structured in a work of fiction. Have discussions with your child that encourage him or her to think about the work critically. Ask your child about the personalities of different characters, their motivations and what might happen to them after the story is finished. There are also many websites that offer reading games, quizzes and worksheets to help improve your child's comprehension abilities at no cost.

Increasing Vocabulary

The size of your child's vocabulary is integral to his or her reading capabilities. Help your child increase his or her vocabulary by creating word lists from texts. Read these texts with your child and discuss the new words. Guide your child in figuring out what words mean by the context in which they're used. Then, use the new words around the house.

Reading at Home

Encourage reading at home on a daily basis. Set aside a time each night for family reading. There are many children's literature book lists available online and at libraries. Go over the list with your child and allow him or her to pick out a number of books. The more your child reads for personal pleasure, the more his or her reading skills are likely to improve.