Family Tapestries - Strengthening Family Bonds

Family Life Month Packet 2002

Family and Consumer Sciences

Campbell Hall 1787 Neil Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210

How Parents Can Build Their Child's Reading Skills

FLM-FS-7-02

Lynda K. Fowler, M.S.,
Family and Consumer Sciences Agent, Crawford County,
Ohio State University Extension, The Ohio State University

Parents have an important role in helping their child develop reading skills. Reading is an important personal, social, and educational activity. The development of reading skills begins during infancy. Babies begin learning language by listening to and responding to parents who talk and sing to their child. This early parent-child communication expands to include a process of imitating, responding, and then initiating as the child's awareness of the importance of words in human interaction grows.

According to research, parents can help build their child's reading skills by practicing the following suggestions:

Demonstrate enjoyment of books and reading by sharing what you have read and talking about how books have contributed to your lives.
Encourage your child to select books at your local library.
Encourage your child's participation in beginning read-aloud sessions by using open-ended questions (e.g., "What is the dog doing?"). Express confidence and praise for your child's contributions.
Read and re-read your child's favorite book to them. Children often memorize stories and will enjoy "reading" back to you what they have heard before. Identify objects in the pictures. Refer to books in conversation.
Keep learning fun. Trying to teach children to read at an early age is not correlated with early reading and can cause frustration. Break up learning activities into manageable blocks that relate to your child's age level and attention span. Play games that involve filling in words in familiar sentences or rhythms. Provide writing materials for your child to practice with. Help your child make a homemade book by cutting words and pictures out of newspapers and magazines. Record a favorite book on tape so that your child can read along with the tape. Encourage your child to write notes to friends and relatives. Avoid the urge to correct a young toddler's first writing attempts. It is the process, not the result that is important.
Invite your child to help you read cooking instructions as you follow a menu to prepare a meal.
Talk to your child about everyday happenings. Show your interest in what your child has to say. Point out words that your child can see on signs and stores. Expand your conversation as your child learns through your example in the practice of using words and seeing words as symbols for understanding language.

Learning to Read—Your Child Grows in Stages

Your child progresses through various stages in the adventure of learning to read. It is never too early to show books to and read to your child. Give inexpensive cloth books to your infant. Babies love to touch, taste, and even tear as they become familiar with books. As your child grows into the preschool years, she or he may want to imitate you and "pretend to read." Children at this age enjoy repetition of familiar stories and often want parents to read the same story over again. This helps children learn to anticipate events, become familiar with details, and understand the sequence of events in the story.

Over time, children begin to understand that words are symbols for ideas and thoughts. By school age, help your child run his or her fingers along individual words in a sentence as they learn that reading proceeds from left to right. Children realize that words have meaning and like to point out words that they can remember. Celebrate these accomplishments! Discussions of the meanings of new words and understanding of the content of what is read are important activities that parents can do with children that help develop their reading comprehension skills.

Sharing the Reading Experience With Your Child

Shared reading is a way that you can help your child grow from listening to stories to reading stories. The choice of reading materials is important because your child must be able to see words clearly. Simple books can be read while your child is still learning letters and words. Characteristics of simple beginning shared reading materials include:

Reading material relates to a topic that you and your child enjoy, will read repetitively, and have interest in discussing. The material may be new to your child or something that your child has read before. Remember, familiarity builds your child's self-confidence.
Material may be a rhyme or poem that your child enjoys to read over and over.
The print must be clear and easy to read.
The material must be simple, with a few lines of print on each page, and repeating patterns of words that help build your child's familiarity with the words.

Phonetic Skills—Teaching Your Child to "Decode" Words

Reading comprehension means making sense of the text. Help your child to notice the print forms and connect them to meaningful words. Point out how sequences of sounds help in figuring out the word. Praise your child's effort at problem solving even if she or he doesn't get the word right. Encourage your child to reread the sentence up to the difficult word and make the sound of the first letter. Give your child time to notice his or her error in word recognition and understanding and work things out. Wait, saying nothing. Show that you value partially correct responses and help your child to sound out word parts and then check to make sure they make sense in the story. Stop the reading if your child is struggling and becoming frustrated. Your child can finish reading with you or you can read it to him or her.

Helping Your Child's Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension means making sense of the text. How do parents help children who have difficulty understanding what they have read? Activities that help your child think while reading include the use of story maps. You can help your child create a map of the story's structure including the characters and events. The technique of "KWL" involves the parent and child brainstorming what they Know, what they Want to find out, and what they have Learned after reading the text. You can suggest strategies such as using sticky notes to mark specific information and features that need to be remembered in the text.

It takes time and patience to learn to read. There is no one best way for parents to teach their child to read. But, by providing a variety of opportunities and resources for your child to read, by being a role model, and by providing praise for your child's accomplishments, you can develop the reading potential and ability of your child.

References

Hess, R. D., & Holloway, S. D. (1984). Family and schools as educational institutions. In R. D. Parke (Ed.) Review of Child Development Research 7: The Family. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Keep Books. (2001). 807 Kinnear Road, Columbus, Ohio, 43212. www.keepbooks.org.
Oesterreich, L. (1997). Understanding children: Learning to read and write. Iowa State University Extension #PM1529e.
Papalia, D. E., & Olds, S. W. (1993). A child's world: Infancy through adolescence. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 422.
Pinnell, G. S., & Fountas, I. C. (1997). Help America read. A handbook for volunteers. Portsmounth, NH: Heinman Publishers.

It is never too early to show books to and read to your child.

For a pdf version of this Fact Sheet, please click here.

For more information, visit the Human Development and Family Life website at: http://www.hec.ohio-state.edu/famlife/

All educational programs conducted by Ohio State University Extension are available to clientele on a nondiscriminatory basis without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, gender, age, disability or Vietnam-era veteran status.

Keith L. Smith, Associate Vice President for Ag. Adm. and Director, OSU Extension.

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