You can help your children develop stronger reading skills by practicing reading strategies when you read aloud to them, or when they read aloud to you. Good reading strategies help new readers to comprehend, evaluate and remember more of what they read. Practice reading strategies with children early and often to help them develop good reading habits for life.
Step 1
Discuss a book or story before you begin reading it with your child. Review important background information about the book's subject, or simply consider the book's title and author. Ask your child what she thinks the title suggests about the book, or if she has read any books or stories by this author before. Use contextual information about the book to set some reading goals or expectations. Prepare some specific questions to consider while reading, such as whether this book resembles others written by the same author, or whether the book's style or subject differs from what the title led your child to expect.
Step 2
Ask your child to summarize the story's events and ideas as you go along. Putting a summary of a text into words can help children find out how well they understood that text. Summarizing can also help children remember what they have read. Pause after chapter endings, significant events or confusing passages to ask your child to summarize what has happened. Help him come up with a summary if he has trouble.
Step 3
Ask productive questions about the text as you read, to prompt further thought about the story. Ask specific questions to check that your child has been following the story's events, and ask inferential questions that require more abstract thought. For example, ask about a particular character's motivations.
Step 4
Help your child identify clues in the text that foreshadow future events in the story. Ask your child to predict what will happen in the story based on these clues.
Step 5
Ask your child to visualize the setting and the characters in a story. Have her describe what she thinks a certain scene looks like.
Step 6
Discuss the story after you finish reading it. Ask your child whether the story's events surprised her or unfolded as she expected they would. Ask inferential questions about what might happen next in the story if it continued, or ask evaluative questions, such as whether or not the child liked the story's characters or its ending.
Tips and Warnings
- Ask your child to circle or point out any words he does not understand. Define those words for the child or have him look them up in a dictionary. Continue reading aloud to children even after they have learned to read themselves. Reading aloud to children allows them to practice reading-comprehension strategies without having to worry about how fast they are reading.
