Reading Strategies
Children need to integrate a variety of strategies in order to become fluent, independent readers with strong comprehension.
Your child should use a combination of phonics, sight words, language experience, and meaning to become a successful reader. When your child is sounding out a word, he should also be thinking about what would make sense. Some words are not spelled phonetically, therefore, your child needs to develop and continue to strengthen his sight vocabulary. Your child also needs to check to make sure what he is reading makes sense and sounds grammatically correct. Your child should be able to answer literal and inferential questions about what he has read.
Here are some ways in which you can help your child develop these critical skills:
- When your child is stuck on a word, ask him to try sounding it out while thinking about what would make sense.
- Have your child look for known parts of a word: sandy, spin, other.
- Encourage your child to skip over the unknown word and read the rest of the sentence. Think about what might make sense, then go back to the beginning of the sentence and re-read the whole sentence.
- If your child reads something incorrectly and it is not grammatically correct, ask the following questions: Does that sound right? and/or Does that make sense Practice the sight words that are sent home weekly. Put them on flashcards and mix the order of the words often.
- Read to your child, even if your child can already read. Listen to your child read several times weekly. Allowing your child to re-read familiar books and books slightly below his ability will help improve your child's fluency and self-confidence.
- Ask both literal and inferential questions about what your child has read. Have your child orally sequence the order (beginning, middle, end) of the story he's read. When your child is stuck have him try a few strategies independently before giving him the word.