For Parents of Beginning Readers: Helping a Child Become a Reader Donna M. Scanlon Reading Department & Child Research and Study Center The University at Albany 0
1992, rev 1998, 2004, 2010. Not to be reproduced without permission Note: To avoid the distraction sometimes caused by using both the male and female versions of pronouns each time an individual child is referred to (he/she, him/her), this document uses only one pronoun at a time but switches between the male and female versions in successive questions. 1
Parents of children who are beginning to learn to read have many questions about how to help their children learn to read. This booklet presents some of the most common questions parents ask along with answers and suggestions parents have found helpful. Most often, the questions that parents raise are focused on the most apparent and immediate challenges that face beginning readers that is, figuring out how to read the words. While this is certainly a major aspect of early reading development, it is important to keep the central purpose of reading in mind while reading with children. The central purpose is to understand and enjoy what is read and to help to build the knowledge base that allows readers to comprehend the more challenging texts that will be encountered in the future. Sometimes parents and young children lose sight of the fact that the primary purpose of reading is to understand, enjoy, and learn from what is written. When children are first learning to read, much of their energy is quite naturally directed to accurately reading the words. When this happens across a long period of time however, children may come to believe that accurate word identification is more important than comprehension. Parents can help their children to stay focused on the meaning of text by routinely talking with them about what is happening in a book before, during, and after reading. 2
Such conversations should have a conversational tone with both the parent and the child sharing their reactions (for example How would you feel if that happened to you? or That is not what I thought would happen! ), making predictions (for example, I think he s going to. ), asking and answering questions of the author and/or characters in the book (for example, I wonder why the author decided to ; What do you think Bob was thinking when he did that?? ). The parent s job in such interactions is to send the clear message that reading is primarily about making sense of what we read. Accurately identifying most of the words is important mostly because it allows the child to make sense of what he is reading. Below, some of the questions most frequently raised by parents are addressed. What kinds of books should my child be reading? Let your child choose what to read and make sure that there are books available which are not too difficult for her. Your child should know or be able to figure out 95% or more of the words in the book, otherwise, the book is likely to be too difficult for her and she may 3
become frustrated. You cannot assume that a book that is written for young children is necessarily intended to be read by them. Rather, many of these books are intended to be read to children. Many public libraries and bookstores have Easy Reader sections that will contain books appropriate for the beginning reader. Also, the children s librarian in most public libraries will be happy to help you and your child find books. Additionally, your child s teacher should be able to recommend books that would be appropriate for your child to read. Try to have books and other reading materials available everywhere your child spends time (in her bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, the family room, the bathroom, the car, etc.). Have a variety of reading materials available such as storybooks, books about science, nature and history, poetry, joke books, magazines, comic books, books about things that particularly interest your child, etc. Not all of these materials need to be easy enough for your child to read. Simply having them available for her to look at and/or reading them to her will encourage her interest in reading. 4
How much time should my child spend reading? In general, the more a child reads, the more quickly his reading ability will develop. Ideally, a beginning reader would read at home for 15 minutes or more each day. Note that a child will read more in a given 15 minute period, and will enjoy reading more, if he is reading materials that are relatively easy for him than if he is reading materials that are challenging. Most beginning readers will not be very interested in reading to themselves so it is helpful to find time for your child to read to you or to another adult every day. Many families find time for reading at bedtime, but young children are tired then and it may not be the best time to ask them to read since, at the early stages of reading development, it takes a lot of energy to read. For young children, reading also requires a lot of concentration. Therefore, children should have the opportunity to read without too many distractions around. It is not necessary for you to be sitting right next to your child and looking over his shoulder while he reads. The child might be asked to read to you while you are driving, folding laundry, preparing meals, etc. (In such cases, if your child needs help with a word, ask him to tell you what letters are in the word so that you can identify it for him.) 5
My child avoids reading. What should I do? Ideally, reading should be a pleasant experience for both you and your child. Most often when a child avoids reading it is because reading is difficult for her. There are a number of ways to make reading easier for a child: Choose easy reading materials. Children are able to enjoy reading more when they can readily identify the words and, as a result, concentrate more on the meaning of what they read. Therefore, do not discourage your child from choosing reading material that is very easy for her. Sometimes children enjoy reading books which they have memorized. If your child points to the words while reading, even this can be a useful activity as it helps her to make connections between the word she is pointing to and the word she is saying. It will also help to reinforce certain conventions of printed language such as (in English) we begin reading (and writing) on the left side of the page and move to the right. Take turns reading to each other. Children often enjoy reading more, and as a result do more reading, if an adult does some of the reading. This is especially useful when children want to attempt books that are somewhat difficult for them. Sometimes, especially for a child at the very beginning stages of learning to read, it is useful to read the entire book to her before she 6
reads it. That way the child learns what the book is about and may learn a few of the words in the book before she attempts to read it. In addition, having a sense of the story will help her to successfully figure out many words that might otherwise be too difficult. Alternatively, for longer and more difficult books, the adult and child might take turns reading every other page. While the adult reads, the child will be able to concentrate on the meaning and message of the book. This understanding will allow the child to read more effectively when it comes time for her to read. Read the same book more than once. Re-reading helps the child develop fluency and confidence. Some children enjoy re-reading and will need little encouragement to do so. Others may not enjoy rereading but may occasionally be interested in reading a book they ve read before to a grandparent, a younger child, a babysitter, etc. Do not make re-reading an issue if your child really doesn t want to do it. It is the total amount of reading that a child does that influences her reading development. The amount of reading a child does can be increased through re-reading and/or through providing opportunities for the child to read new things that are relatively easy for her to read. Provide your child with any assistance she needs in reading. Tell her words she doesn t recognize. Explain portions of the book that may be confusing because she has been struggling with some of the 7
words or because the language or concepts in the book are unfamiliar. Parents are their children s first teachers! Avoid situations that may cause your child to lose confidence in her reading ability. Sometimes other children can be quite mean in the comments they make about a beginning reader s reading. It also sometimes happens that well-intentioned adults set a child up for failure (and therefore loss of confidence) by presenting her with a reading task that is too difficult for her. How can I encourage my child to like reading? Be enthusiastic and encouraging about your child s reading ability. Read to your child (bedtime is a good time for this). Children gain a great deal of information and many language skills when their parents read to them and the parent and child, together, discuss what is read. The knowledge and language skills your child gains through being read to will serve him well in the future as he is asked to read and understand more and more challenging materials on his own. To reap the benefits of reading aloud to your child, it is important to discuss the books that you read together. Talk about what the characters are doing and why. 8
Make guesses about what will happen next in the book and encourage your child to guess. When appropriate, compare characters, events, and/or facts from different books. Help your child to understand that any difficulties he has with reading are temporary and that the more reading he does the easier reading will become. Compare reading to some other skill the child has had to put time and effort into in order to become competent. For example, if the child has experience with a little one who is learning to walk and talk, discussing the child s early efforts with these skills, which they now perform effortlessly, can serve as a powerful demonstration of the benefits of continuing to engage in an activity that initially requires quite a bit of effort. Let your child see you and others read for enjoyment and for the purpose of gathering information. Tell your child about things you have read that have interested you. Treat reading as a form of entertainment and as a rewarding experience. For example, rather than saying Let s get your reading done and then you can watch TV (which makes reading the job and TV the reward), say Let s get this room cleaned up and then we ll have time for two books (which makes cleaning up the job and reading the reward). 9
What should I do when my child makes a mistake when reading? When a mistake occurs, it is generally a good idea to allow the child to continue reading past the error to the end of the sentence. Often, by then she will notice her mistake because she will realize that the sentence doesn t make sense and/or doesn t sound right. When a child realizes this, she will often attempt to go back and fix the mistake. This is exactly what we want children to do. Praise your child for noticing and fixing a mistake (for example, I like the way you figured out that word or You noticed that it didn t make sense and you went back and fixed it. ). If your child reaches the end of the sentence and doesn t realize a mistake has been made, it is fine to point it out to her, especially if the mistake changes the meaning of the sentence or the story. Point out mistakes in an encouraging way. For example, you might say Nice reading! There was just one word that gave you a little trouble. Do not get annoyed or impatient even if your child misses a word she has read correctly many times before. Those kinds of mistakes happen for a variety of reasons when a child is learning to read and you do not want to make your child feel anxious or frustrated by expressing annoyance or impatience. 10
On some days my child seems to have more difficulty reading than other days. Should I worry about this? No. It often happens that a child who reads quite well one day will not read as comfortably the next. Exactly why this happens is not clear. However, it may frustrate your child when he experiences more difficulty than usual and you may need to be ready to provide him with a little more assistance or help him select an easier book to read that day. Is it OK for a child to skip over a word she does not know? Yes. It is often helpful for children to read past unknown words to get the meaning of the rest of the sentence. Reading ahead helps children figure out what word would make sense for the unknown word. Often when they are reading out loud, children will skip over an unknown word and silently read beyond it in an attempt to figure out what the unknown word might be. Many children are specifically taught to use this strategy as one way of trying to figure out a word. However, since using this strategy may take a while, it is important to give the child enough time to figure things out if she wants to try. Skipping over words is only a problem if the child doesn t go back to the skipped word later to try to figure it out again. 11
My child does not want to sound out words he does not know. Should I insist that he do so? No. There are many ways to figure out unknown words. Sounding them out is an important way but there are other clues that the child can and should use to identify a word. For most words, thinking about the sounds that the letters make will help a great deal in figuring out what the word might be. Thus, looking at the letters and letter combinations and thinking about their sounds is an important first step. However, at the beginning stages of reading, children are often unfamiliar with many of the letter patterns that appear in words and many of the words they encounter cannot be sounded out. For example, it is not possible to accurately sound out a word like night unless the ight pattern (as in light, night, bright, sight, etc.) has been specifically taught and learned. However, even without such teaching, the child might be successful in figuring out the pronunciation of the word if she uses other sources of information such as the information provided in the surrounding sentence or the pictures on the page. Placing too much emphasis on using one type of information (for example the letters and their sounds) instead of another (for example helping the child to think of word(s) that would make sense in the context of the sentence) may make reading more difficult for the child. Ideally, the child would make use of the multiple clues for word identification that a text provides (i.e., letter sounds, the surrounding sentence, 12
clues from the pictures on the page). Further, the child should be encouraged to use those various sources of information to confirm that a word has been accurately identified. That is, the child should be encouraged to check to make sure that the word they pronounce matches the letters in the printed word and fits the context of the sentence. Thus, for example, while a child s phonics skills may lead her to expect that the word said would be pronounced to rhyme with maid, she is likely to reject this pronunciation because sayed is not a word she knows. If she has an expectation that what she is reading will make sense, and uses her sense making skills in combination with her knowledge of letters and sounds, the child is more likely to settle on the correct identity of the initially puzzling word. My child seems to spend more time looking at the pictures than reading. What should I do? In books written for beginning readers, the pictures often help to tell the story and/or provide important information about the text. The pictures are often intended to help the children read words that they would not otherwise be able to figure out. Therefore, a child will understand the book better, and find reading easier, if she looks at the pictures carefully. Looking at the pictures is generally something to encourage. 13
Sometimes my child seems to have trouble reading a whole sentence without going back and rereading parts of it. Is this a problem? Typically children go back and start over in a sentence because they are having some difficulty with understanding the sentence and/or with identifying the words in the sentence. Going back and starting over is a very good strategy for dealing with such difficulty and should be encouraged (for example, I like the way you are trying to figure that out ). Sometimes, when my child is reading, he gets annoyed if I tell him a word he doesn t know. Why? For the beginning reader, figuring out unknown words can often be an enjoyable challenge. If you tell your child a word too quickly, you may take away the fun. Therefore, if your child is working on figuring out a word, allow her at least 5 or 10 seconds to figure it out (or more if she doesn t seem frustrated). Praise her attempts at figuring out unknown words even if the attempt is unsuccessful. For example, you might say, That is a puzzling word, but I like the way you tried to figure it out. My child sometimes reads or writes letters and words backwards. Does this mean that my child is dyslexic? 14
No. Most beginning readers and writers, at times, make errors such as saying d when they see the letter b, or saying saw when they see the word was. These mistakes happen because letters like b and d and words like was and saw look so much alike. It takes a while for the child to remember which is which. It also takes young children a while to learn that they need to pay attention to the order of letters in words and to the direction letters face. It is difficult for children to learn that order and direction are important because, for most things they ve seen (other than letters, words, and numbers), the order or direction from which an object is viewed does not change what the object is called. For example, a spoon is called a spoon, no matter what direction it is viewed from. Research evidence indicates that children who experience such confusions DO NOT see things backwards. Rather, they simply have trouble remembering what to call letters and words that look the same except for their orientation or direction. There is no research evidence indicating that children who make these kinds of mistakes in the early stages of learning to read will have long-term reading difficulties. Errors of this type usually become much less frequent and may disappear altogether as the child becomes a more accomplished reader and writer. The term dyslexia is used to refer to children who continue to have severe difficulty with reading despite having had extensive instructional support that was explicitly designed to meet their literacy learning needs. 15
Children who experience such severe difficulties will often continue to confuse letters like b and d and words like was and saw. These errors occur because these children are still at the early stages of learning to read and therefore continue to have difficulty remembering what to call these similar looking letters and words or because they have confused these items so often that it is very difficult to overcome the confusion. Scientific research has repeatedly demonstrated that these errors are not due to visual problems. They are due to problems with remembering what specific letters and words are called. Parents can help children overcome these confusions by providing gentle correction (for example, That s a B ). In addition to reading to my child and listening to him read, what else can I do to encourage reading development? Below are some suggestions for activities children enjoy. You might find one or two that are particularly appealing to your child. Write (or print) short notes to your child Use mostly words you know your child can read and leave the notes where he will find them. Encourage your child to write Make sure that pencils and paper are readily available - in your child s room, in the kitchen, in the car, etc. Children often enjoy keeping journals or writing stories and illustrating 16
them. Some children like to write and illustrate books that can then be bound by simply sewing or stapling the edges of the pages together. Sometimes children will not want to write these more lengthy pieces but will be happy to write things down on the shopping list or answer notes you have written. Do not expect or require perfect spelling at these early stages. Take dictation Many children enjoy dictating stories or other kinds of books and having someone else write them down (or type them on the computer). These stories can become long and involved and may often include the child as a main character (for example, as the star of a sporting event or as the heroine or hero of an adventure story or fantasy). Frequently children are able to read these stories quite easily even though they contain many words the child might not recognize in another context. Stories the child has created are easier for him to read because he already knows the story line. He has a sense of what words to expect. Children who enjoy writing these stories will often enjoy reading them over and over to family members and friends. Play word games with high frequency words. Children who can accurately and quickly read the words that occur most frequently in print (words such as is, on, of, the, with) will generally find it easier to puzzle through unfamiliar words they encounter while reading. The known words help to establish the context for the unfamiliar words and thus give the 17
children clues about what the unknown word might be. Therefore, it is useful to engage the children in gamelike practice activities with words that occur frequently. Two well-loved games that can be used to provide such practice are described below. Concentration / Memory Make a list of high frequency words that your child has encountered in his reading and that he has some difficulty with. Choose 10 or 15 words to use for the game. Print each word on 2 index cards or squares of paper. Shuffle all of the word cards together and then lay them out, face down, on the table in three or four rows. Take turns trying to find word cards that match. Say the word on the card each time a card is turned over. To ensure that this game is fun, be ready to name the words as they are turned over. Do not insist that your child do so. (This is a game, not a test.) Simply by hearing you name the word as it is turned over, the child will begin to learn the word. Note: All players in this game should be on the same side of the table and the word cards should be viewed right side up. Go Fish Use the same cards you made for the Concentration game. Shuffle the cards and deal 5 to 7 cards to each player. Spread out the remaining cards face down. Players then take turns trying to get matches for the words they are holding in their hand by asking the other player for the word they wish to match. If the other player does not have the requested word, he tells the player who asked for it to Go Fish. Note 18
that, if the child is not able to identify a word in his hand, he should be allowed to spell it rather than naming the word. The adult player would respond by saying the word. For example, if the child wanted the word with, he might ask Do you have the word that s spelled w, i, t, h? The adult might respond, Yes, I have the word with. 19