Ten Simple, Surprisingly Effective Things
Parents and Other Caregivers Can Do
to Foster Literacy Skills in Children
- Read! Read a lot, bring books everywhere – you never know when you might have downtime or a wait: Read with your child, to your child, in front of your child. Talk about your reading preferences and choices, and how you find new books to read. Encourage your child to develop his/her own reading preferences and habits, but also to try new things.
(Frequent readers are better readers because a child with a great sense of story understands stories better than one who does not, and will be prepared for the kinds of language used in written texts, as opposed to that used in speech. In the same way, a child who’s read lots of nonfiction will understand how nonfiction texts work and will know what to expect in terms of its organization of the information.)
JUST RIGHT BOOKS: Encourage your child to read materials that are at his or her appropriate reading level. Many parents are surprised to learn what makes a book too difficult! Children should be able to read their independent reading books with 95% immediate accuracy (they can read books with as low as 90% accuracy with some help.) As well, many children can appear to “read” a book by saying the words aloud, but can still have little or no idea what they are reading. A child’s reading ability can only improve when he or she is reading books that are comfortable for him/her to read independently, or with a moderate amount of help and support. One of the few things that can actually cause a child to develop poor reading habits (other than NOT reading!) is to read materials that are far too difficult. (This does not, however, mean that your child can’t tackle appropriate challenges, especially with your help.)
- Talk about what you read together. Ask fewer “thin” questions, those that feel like a quiz (“Where did the mouse go after dinner?”), and more “thick” questions that require understanding of the story but also foster deeper thinking, and require your child to think, predict, and imagine (“What would you have done if you were so-and-so in that story?).
- Have rich and varied experiences and conversations in your family. Much of what helps a child to be a successful reader happens before the act of reading itself – a child with a strong vocabulary and rich background knowledge will be able to understand what he or she reads more easily; as well, they’ll have been exposed to colloquial expressions like “having the upper hand,” that many children are able to read but cannot explain.
- Read aloud to your child, long after they “need” you to. Listening to books above his/her reading level gives a child a model of what good reading sounds like, a model of what strong readers do when they come upon a difficult part of a book, as well as building vocabulary and background knowledge.
Many books on CD can be borrowed from the public library – or, if you prefer to purchase them for yourself, websites such as audible.com provide a convenient way to download books and listen to them on the go. Listening to books on CD can make long road trips more bearable for everyone!
- Tell (and write down) stories about your lives. Scribe them for your child initially, then gradually turn over responsibility. Add drawings or photographs, if you can, and these will quickly become favorite books.
- Give your child a “writer’s notebook,” from an early age, and encourage him or her to draw and write about the things they notice and/or are important to them. Using whatever sounds/letters they know, they can add labels, and eventually captions to the pictures. When you discuss the entries in the notebook, focus on what your child has done well, rather than his/her errors, and don’t correct more than one or two mistakes per piece. (It’s HARD to bite your tongue, but much more likely to encourage him or her to continue!) Children who have enjoyed writing in a notebook throughout the school year will often continue this practice, especially with some encouragement. Even if your child doesn't have a writer's notebook, any form of writing will work to keep his or her literacy skills sharp in the summertime. Experiment with sketchbooks, science notebooks (keeping track of experiments or things in nature), or Parent-Child Journals (see sidebar for a description).
- Make bigger meaning out of the simpler things your child says (connect, but expand on them), to validate what’s being said, as well as to develop vocabulary. You did this while they were small, and when they said, “ball,” you might have replied, “Yes, you’re holding your blue ball!” Do this on a higher level with an older child. If he or she says, “that was a good movie,” you might reply, “It was good - I really like movies where the characters work together to solve their problem,” etc.
- Play with words – for younger children, this means rhyming and other phonemic awareness activities; for older kids, this might mean using pig latin or adding on/switching/taking away parts of longer words (like base words, roots, and suffixes). Children who understand that words are made up of smaller parts will have an easier time learning to read, write and spell.
- Start a Summer Book Club: Get your child together with a few friends with similar interests and similar reading abilities – smaller numbers of children work best
Let the children help create an agenda for their meetings, and decide which books to read; take turns meeting in new places. Don’t forget to feed them!
- Fill your home and life with other opportunities to read and write.
o Never underestimate the inspirational effect of new office supplies! Keep lots of fun books, papers, notebooks, journals, markers, crayons, pencils, staplers, post it notes, scotch tape, etc. around the house and in your car, in places where your child can get to them on his/her own, take them out, and put them away easily.
o Play games that encourage development of reading-related skills: for example:
- Memory & Spot It! (improve visual memory/matching skills),
- Puzzles (they encourage visual completion of a whole)
- Sorting games (categorizing is great brain exercise - laundry counts, but buttons, leaves, rocks, and silverware work, too!),
- Retelling stories in the correct order (sequencing),
- Singing songs, or repeating poems (improving fluency with language and becoming comfortable with "book language").
- There are lots of games that encourage language development:
- Rory’s Story Cubes
- Tell Tale
- Stamp a Story
- Don’t Say It! (like Taboo for younger kids)
- Silly Situations
- Great games that encourage the development of letter-sound associations and visual memory for words
- Scrabble
- Bananagrams
- Pairs in Pears
- Boggle
o Subscribe to a children’s magazine about a topic of interest to your child (or ask someone to buy it as a birthday gift). Children love to have their own mail waiting for them, and the short, high-interest articles will entice even a reluctant reader, as well as build their background knowledge. See sidebar for a list of ideas.
