Helping Your Children at Home

We believe that successful reading is the key to success at Fleming. For this reason we are continuously looking for ways to encourage your children to read. We need your support in this campaign as reading at home is vital if your child is to develop good reading habits. Find below a series of suggestions of ways in which you can help your child to read at home. I hope you find the suggestions interesting and useful.

Read yourself! Show a good example by reading for fun and talking about the reading you do at work and at home: books, newspapers, magazines, letters, lists.

Keep books at home. Let your child know that books are a part of your life.  Keep books safe. Make your child their own special place to keep their books in their bedroom. 

Use the school library As well as taking out story books use visits to the library as a time to find books and CD ROMs about your child’s hobbies and interests: pets, football, music, bikes, etc.

Make a time to read. Set aside a time for reading for the family – after school or before bedtime. Encourage independent reading but don’t be afraid to still tell a bedtime story. Encourage a T.V.free evening more than once a week where the family all sits to read together.Don’t just read books. Encourage your child to read newspapers, TV guides, comics and magazines.

Use reading to get information. Ask your child to find out information from the Yellow Pages, the Internet, cookery books, etc.

Talk about books. Talk to your child and their friends about why they chose a book and their preferences. Talk about the books you like to read. Let your child read with younger children. Encourage them to read to other members of the family: brothers and sisters, cousins. Keep in touch with school. Make sure your child swaps their home reading books regularly at school and try to make a regular time slot of about 10 minutes to hear them read. Talk to the class teacher about your child’s reading. If English is not your family’s first language: You can buy dual language books. You can talk about books and stories in any language.

Be positive! Praise your child for trying hard at their reading. Let them know it’s all right to make mistakes. Give them time. Let them make a guess before you tell them the word. Let them read to the end of the line before correcting their mistakes.

Spot words inside words. Help them to spot words they know within larger more complicated words. Read on then go back and guess. Read the sentence through to the end then go back and guess the difficult word.

Don’t make them try too hard! It doesn’t matter if you have to tell them the word sometimes. Let them read their favourites. Don’t worry if they want to read the same books over and over, or stick to one kind of book. If they are really stuck, ask the librarian or teacher to suggest something they might like. Make the story come to life. Encourage your child to read with expression. This will help them read more fluently.

Ask lots of questions about the story. What would you have done if you were…….? Does this book remind you of any thing that has happened to you? Which is your favourite character? Why?
Does this story remind you of any others you have read? Can you guess what is going to happen next?

Use a dictionary. Buy a simple dictionary and use it to check the meanings of new words. Try not to interrupt the flow of the reading by consulting the dictionary too often. Don’t read for too long. A good ten minutes is better than a difficult half an hour.

Make it FUN!  Buy books or book tokens as presents. Buy comics and magazines after school instead of sweets. Have a laugh reading joke books. Encourage your child to make their own books about any subject that interests them. Use the Internet or books from the library to help. Spend time chatting about books and stories. Let children play on the computer using word processing or the Internet. A lot of computer software has reading material.

Do crosswords or word-searches. Play Scrabble. Make scrapbooks about their favourite stars. Make shopping lists and read recipes to cook things together. Write stories and poems together. Write songs or plays or act out a story as a play. Perform them to the family.

Listen to story tapes or watch film and TV versions of books. Don’t just read in the ten minutes before you fall asleep.

What to pick? Encourage your child to read all kinds of books and reading materials; stories, information books, comics, computer games, jokes, pop-up books, puzzles, CD ROMs, the Internet. Move from short chapter books with pictures to longer chapter books as they become better readers.

Who can help? Let your child choose. Don’t worry if they sometimes want to read books you think they have outgrown. Children are more likely to read a book if they picked it themselves. Speak to the class teacher to get some advice on which books to choose. Ask the librarian or bookseller to help you choose. Use the internet and sites such as Amazon.Com to choose and order books.

More information: Augusto Lescano

alescano@fleming.edu.pe