Read 20 Minutes Every Day With Your Child!

Learning to read is hard work for children (especially age 5 and older). Fortunately, there are things we can do to help raise good readers. Reading with a child for 20 minutes every day dramatically improves their ability to read. (Most parents do not ever read to their children!) AND the best part is you can begin from BIRTH -- never consider a child too young to begin, nor too old. Some of the greatest family bonding times can come from family read-alouds too.

Here are some simple things you can do to help create a strong reader.

• Be fun and creative, animate the story by using character voices and dramatics
  
• Ask questions as you read, so they can think beyond just the words they hear
  
• Relate stories to your child's life, are they the same or different, what would they do, etc.
  
• Re-read your child's favorite books, they're learning from them again and again!
  
• Run your finger along the words as you read, this shows we read from left to right.
  
• Let your children turn the pages, involve them in the process
  
• Select stories that use repeated phrases. Rhymes help teach word endings and build confidence, let them finish the phrases.
  
• Subscribe to a children's magazine and enjoy it together
• Get a library card for your child. They love to check out their own books.
• Ask your librarian for a recommended (age appropriate) book list.
• Fill your home with books (studies have shown there is a direct correlation to adult illiteracy was connected to the number of books in their homes as children)
• Be a reading role model. Why should they read, if they don't ever see you enjoying books. Share your excitement of a story you're reading.
  
• Tell stories to your child, allow their minds to imagine the people, places, times and circumstances.
  
• Ask them to review (narrate) the story back to you. Helps with building memory, sequencing and other valuable learning skills.
• When planning a family vacation. Read books that describe the history of the destination, or stories of the different modes of travel you will take to get there. Get stories that are set in those places and then while there have the children see if they can locate any landmarks that were read about before the trip. Historical fiction is also a fun way to learn too!
  

adapted from a bookmark put out by the sponsors of "Read With A Child": Zion's Bank, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Bonneville International, and Governor's Literacy Commission (Utah)

Growing Up To Read

Article taken from "Starting Out Right"
http://bob.nap.edu/readingroom/books/sor/sor-2.htm
____________________

Children begin to develop their language skills in infancy. Even their babbles and coos and the ways their families speak to them before they really understand can help them to become speakers of their native tongue. When an infant shows excitement over pictures in a storybook, when a two-year-old scribbles with a crayon, when a four-year-old points out letters in a street sign--all of these actions signal a child's growing literacy development.

The more children already know about the nature and purposes of reading before kindergarten, the more teachers have to build on in their reading instruction. Research reveals that the children most at risk for reading difficulties in the primary grades are those who began school with less verbal skill, less phonological awareness, less letter knowledge, and less familiarity with the basic purposes and mechanisms of reading.

To prepare children for reading instruction in the early grades, it is best that they be exposed to high-quality language and literacy environments--in their homes, day care centers, and preschools. The best time to start sharing books with children is during babyhood, even when they are as young as six weeks. Families, early childhood educators, health care professionals, and communities can bring literacy into the lives of young children.

Early research dating back to the 1930s suggested that there was little use in teaching children how to read until they had already conquered specific readiness skills, such as certain fine motor skills and the ability to tell right from left.

Today, researchers know more. They know that growing up to be a reader depends mostly on the child's knowledge about language and print. A wide range of experiences with printed and spoken language, from infancy through early childhood, strongly influences a child's future success in reading. What is good for a six-year-old, however, is not necessarily good for a three-year-old. Children need activities they will enjoy and can succeed at, without being pushed uncomfortably beyond their current developmental stage.

-- Even when children cannot yet spell,
they learn from trying to write.
-- Even when children cannot yet read,
they learn from being read to.

Article taken from "Starting Out Right"
http://bob.nap.edu/readingroom/books/sor/sor-2.htm