Top Tips for Teaching Your Child to Read

When your child starts school, their new teachers will start introducing them to letters, sounds and eventually reading. However, it wouldn’t hurt for you to help your child with their reading comprehension using some simple exercises at home. All children learn at their own pace, so be patient and if they’re not ready, don’t push it. The trick is to work with their enthusiasm. Here are some tips for teaching your child to read from an independent school in Somerset.

Start by doing some research into what’s involved in learning to read and how to teach. Teaching doesn’t come naturally to everyone and you may find it challenging, so it’s important to understand the process. You should understand what a phoneme is; it is often a single letter but can sometimes be a combination of multiple letters, like a in cat or ai in rain. 

Some words are easier to sound out than others. Begin by helping your child decode simple three letter words, like dog and cat. Sound out each letter one at a time. Eventually your child will start to memorise these words and won’t need to sound them out letter by letter. They can then move onto trickier words, but don’t rush them before they’re ready. 

Your child will benefit from having easy access to child friendly books and perhaps even an alphabet chart pinned up on the wall, so that they can become more familiar with letters and words. Sing the alphabet song on a regular basis so that your child learns what each letter sounds like. In fact, singing songs in general can help your child become more familiar with sounds and rhythms within different words. 

Flash cards are also a great learning tool for young children. You can use pictures and words to help your child understand the meaning of each word, as being able to read them is not the same as knowing what they mean. Cover up the pictures and see if your child still knows what the word says. 

Little and often is a good motto when it comes to teaching your child to read. You will need to be persistent without over doing it, because you don’t want your child to find reading boring or frustrating. Read with them each night before bed so that they begin to associate reading with a warm, loving embrace and quality time with you, rather than something uninteresting and irritating.