Reading Readiness
Here are a dozen tips for nurturing your growing readers:
- Read with your child at least once every day.
- Make sure they have plenty to read. Take them to the library regularly, and keep books and other reading materials in their reach.
- Notice what interests them, then help them find books about those things.
- Respect your child's choices. There's nothing wrong with series fiction if that's what keeps a young reader turning the pages.
- Praise your child's efforts and newly acquired skills.
- Help your child build a personal library. Children's books, new or used, make great gifts and appropriate rewards for reading. Designate a bookcase, shelf or box where your child can keep their books.
- Check up on your child's progress. Listen to them read aloud, read what they write and ask teachers how they're doing in school.
- Go places and do things with your child to build their background knowledge and vocabulary, and to give them a basis for understanding what they read.
- Tell stories. It's a fun way to teach values, pass on family history and build your child's listening and thinking skills
- Be a reading role model. Let your child see you read, and share some interesting things with them that you have read about in books, newspapers or magazines.
- Continue reading aloud to older children even after they have learned to read themselves.
- Encourage writing along with reading. Ask children to sign their artwork, add to your shopping list, take messages and make their own books and cards as gifts.
This guideline for nurturing readers is taken from: "Read me a Story" taken from the RIF Foundation reading guide
