Speed reading and reading comprehension are two important life skills, whether for a child taking academic tests or for an adult going about his day. As a parent, you should foster a love of reading in your children to make the learning process easier. Implement the right strategies that yield the best results, and role model the importance of reading. As you make greater efforts to improve reading proficiency in your children, they will become better readers.
Step 1
Read to children early on in life. According to a report by the National Institute for Literacy, emergent literacy skills depend on the following three facets of development: oral language, recognition of letter combinations and phonological processing---understanding which letter clusters produce which sounds. By reading to children at an early age, 3 or older, and having them follow along, most children are able to hone in on key patterns of sounds and letters--the foundation of reading. Repeated experience of this activity can give children a leg up on other students in terms of eventual reading comprehension.
Step 2
Keep reading material exciting. Children are more apt to read passages that relate to what they want to learn or what appeals to their interests. Ideally, you would want your children to be reading scholarly books, but it may be best to start them off with picture books and perhaps even comics. Research published in "Remedial and Special Education" magazine found kids read faster when images help to organize and predict the reading passages. Another strategy that may work is to have children watch their favorite movies with the sound off or low and closed captioning on. According to the National Captioning Institute, closed captioning significantly improves the vocabulary and reading fluency of most children.
Step 3
Practice reading out loud with your child. Reading, like most skills, improves with hours of practice. For slower readers, select books with fewer difficult words that are easier to get through. As children build up confidence in their ability to read, they are more likely to increase reading in the future. Furthermore, visual imagery provides a tangible sense of what is happening in the story. As you progress away from picture books, encourage children to describe to you the content of passages to help enable them to produce imagined images of their own. Once children learn to hone in on letter-sounds, predict which words or ideas flow next in a story and develop a passion for getting through reading material, their reading skills and comprehension will take off.
References
- National Institute for Lliteracy: Developing Early Literacy
- "Remedial and Special Education"; Teaching Low Performing Students to Apply Generative and Schema Strategies to Narrative and Expository Materials; Carnine, D & Kinder, D.; 1985
- Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District: Closed-Captioning to Improve Reading
