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10 quick tips to improve your child’s reading
- Broaden your child's interest in many subjects by encouraging them to read newspapers, comics, magazines and books. Show interest and talk about what they are reading.
- Help your child work on their grammar. Students who pay attention to the structure of a sentence can decipher meaning better.
- Build on their critical reasoning skills. Can your child see the difference between a weak and a strong argument? Can they explain why one opinion is more reliable than another? Encourage them to look at arguments closely.
- Get your child to anticipate and predict in fiction. Predicting encourages active reading.
- Ask your child to identify how the material is organised. Is the material organised chronologically, serially, logically, functionally, spatially or hierarchical?
- Be part of your child's discovery. Create motivation and interest by asking them questions and discussing ideas. The stronger your interest, the greater their comprehension.
- Remind your child to pay attention to supporting cues: Study pictures, graphs and headings. Many people are visual learners - use all the visual cues to help understand the meaning of the text.
- Read, read and re read To develop a deeper understanding, you have to highlight, summarize and review important ideas. This means looking at text more than once.
- Build your child's vocabulary. The best way to improve your vocabulary is to use a dictionary regularly. There are some great dictionary Apps, encourage your child to use them.
- Encourage your child to vocalise words. Although it is faster for students to form words in their mind rather than on their lips. Reading aloud can often assist in better comprehension because it slows the reader down and makes them think about every word and cue.
One way they could read aloud would be to read to a dog! - You are welcome to call us to help with tutoring sessions which teach comprehension skills with the help of a friendly Animal Assisted Intervention dog.