Ready, Set, Read: Specific activities to make your child a reader!

Ready, Set, Read: Specific activities to make your child a reader!
Author: Deanna Mascle

found this and good for my son to improve his reading...


Providing positive, enjoyable literacy experiences give young children opportunities to gain the knowledge, awareness, skills, and love of learning that they need to later learn to read independently. Here are 8 ways you can provide those experiences:

CHOOSE THE RIGHT BOOKS

Choose books that have large colorful pictures or photos; a few words on a page; rich language; and relate to concepts, people, or things in children's lives. With this exposure, young children learn that books and reading explain the world they live in and ultimately help them better understand themselves. Sound like a tall order for a toddler?

Not really when you consider perennial favorites such as The Hungry Caterpillar. This book does not contain many words but teaches counting and science concepts.

READ OUT LOUD

Read to children regularly and often. Pick a regular reading time, but also watch for opportunities to read books, signs, letters, or other print spontaneously. The experience of reading as a typical, everyday occurrence helps children gain confidence that they can learn to read themselves.

Stories influence children's learning for life. Some research suggests that the more stories children hear before entering school, the more likely they will be successful academically. Listening to books benefits their vocabulary and comprehension.

Spending just 15 minutes a day on this worthwhile activity can reap tremendous benefits!

MAKE READING FUN

Use a variety of expressions, tones, and voices to make a book even more fun.

Allow a child to listen at her own pace. If a baby fusses or a toddler wanders away, don't worry. Set the book aside and try again later. A baby may only listen for a minute or two at a time. Toddlers may want to wander around while you read, or listen to a few pages, move on to something else, and then return for a few more pages.

Encourage a child to join in on repeating phrases or rhymes, and honor requests to read the same book over and over.

MAKE BOOKS AVAILABLE

Make books available to babies and toddlers every day. Babies don't distinguish books from other toys and may pull, toss, or chew books. This tactile, physical exploration of books and how they work is important to literacy development.

Show how books work. Point out the cover, show which is the top and bottom, front and back of the book, and talk about how words are read from left to right on the page. Use your finger to point to a word and the corresponding picture on the page.

TALK TO YOUR CHILD

Remember literacy is about more than reading the printed word, it is about communication and understanding.

According to the National Research Council in Starting Out Right: A Guide to Promoting Reading Success, "Talk is essential - the more meaningful and substantive the better." Babies and toddlers learn about the sounds, meanings, and ideas in language when adults talk with them. Preschoolers expand their vocabulary and learn sentence structure.

Conversations with your children about what they are reading are critical to children's learning. Discussing books helps them understand how stories work, and how language works. When reading, stop and talk about the pictures and words on the page.

LISTEN TO YOUR CHILD

As much as babies, toddlers, and preschoolers need to hear language, they also need to practice and imitate sounds and words with interested listeners. Respond to your child's conversation and repeat their words back to them. Ask questions to show you are listening and that encourage a child to talk. Listen carefully and acknowledge answers. Listen to children's questions and take time to answer.

SING WITH YOUR CHILD

Children love to sing and can learn a great deal about stories and language from many popular children's songs. Songs also often teach through their content (alphabet, counting, etc.) Many nursery rhymes can also be learned through song and knowledge of nursery rhymes is an important part of overall literacy.

Pull out old favorites like "This Old Man" or "Where is Thumbkin?" and make up your own songs, too.

LET YOUR CHILD WRITE

When children write, they naturally begin to pay attention to the sounds words make and the letters that form words. And it doesn't matter how they spell! Recent research shows that young children who are allowed to write often with invented spelling, develop the ability to become good readers.

Keywords: preschool, education, learn, teach, read, alphabet, rhyme, toddler, homeschool, parent, child

About the Author


Deanna Mascle, Kentucky, United States
Learn more about early childhood education
I am a Renaissance Woman Online because I own four ezines, three newsletters, and more web sites than I like to admit. I have a wide number of internet interests and am fortunate that my two chosen career paths--teaching and writing--allow me to purse my various interests and help others. Visit http://RenaissanceWomanOnline.com or follow the link associated with this article to learn more.

Helping Your Child Enjoy Reading

End of year result just came yesterday.


my son improves his reading but not on the teacher's target.

so how can i force him into reading. find this article so hope it works for me.

Reading doesn't have to be boring! Learn about fun activities and techniques parents can employ to bring excitement into their children's reading.

Many times students do not enjoy reading because they struggle with their reading homework and skills. This can be unfortunate because students can learn a vast amount of information from fiction and non-fictional texts. Thankfully, there are many techniques you can take as a parent to increase your child's joy for reading.

Drama Activities

Drama should no longer remain in the theater. Acting activities help students to picture what they are reading and help them connect the chapters together into a complete story. There are numerous effective exercises that can be done at home. One favorite is a freeze frame.

During a freeze frame, the student picks a particularly important or interesting section from the text, makes important props, and then they freeze into the position of the various characters (this means that you and the rest of the family will have to play along for this to work). This activity lets them use their imagination, connect to the text, and gets the entire family into the learning process.

Making this a group activity is one of the reasons why this helps to increase your child's enjoyment in reading. Reading is no longer a passive, solitary task. Instead, it has become an active, group activity.

Journal Writing

Writing in a reading journal is another way for children to make the connections that are essential to make reading useful and fun. In a reading journal, children write their observations about what is going on in the text. These can be both literal and figurative.

It is also effective to write what the child is thinking and feeling about the literature, along with their reading process. Are they feeling the emotions the characters are feeling, do they read as an outside observer or do they take on one of the characters personas?

Art Activities

You can adapt almost any art activity to apply it to a specific text. For example, in symbolic story representation (SSR) student read a text and then decide what symbol or object is most important or best relates the themes of the story to someone else.

SSRs can be in any form-a picture, sculpture, collage, even every day objects; all that matters is that they apply to the story. These can be extremely simple, yet powerful projects.

SSR projects are fun to make because it allows a student to use their imagination and create or take ownership to something. Sometimes, however, they are even more fun to share because it allows parents and children to see how each other thinks and read. Sharing the SSRs with each other gives additional insight and encouragement to reading.

Reading Help

Sometimes these drama, writing, and art projects are not enough for children. This is especially true if they are struggling with various fundamental reading skills such as reading for context, reading for patterns, and literary analysis. If this is the case, supplemental reading programs are often the best answer. Online tutoring programs can be personalized through assessment tests that show exactly which skills your child is struggling with.

These programs can help your child enjoy reading because they allow your child to understand the various skills needed to master reading and do so through fun and interactive games and activities. Completing these programs produces measurable results in your child and their abilities.

Why reading is good for your brain?

Do you have the ability to read this?






Sir Richard Steele once said, " Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." When you read, you learn. You're actually exercising your brain, because reading makes you think. Even if you're reading a work of fiction, it takes effort to translate the words on the page into mental pictures. You may not realize this as you're reading, but you've become actively involved, unlike when watching television. TV keeps you passively involved, as your brain simply soaks in what's happening on the screen, whereas with reading, you're actively participating.

Studies have shown that reading stimulates your brain, allowing your mind to remain sharp even into old age. If you fail to exercise your brain, your brain will begin to fail. You've heard that if you don't exercise your body, your muscles will decline. The same goes for your mind. If it isn't exercised regularly through reading or studying, it, too, will begin to deteriorate. Learning something new, such as a foreign language, will challenge your brain and force it to create stronger links between memory cells. Reading, also, causes your brain to work harder, which builds stronger brain cell connections.

Akibat kurang kemahiran membaca?

Gagal Kuasai Ilmu Kerana Kurang Kemahiran Membaca

Gagal Kuasai Ilmu ......


Kemahiran membaca merupakan asas yang membolehkan anak-anak menguasai pelbagai ilmu-ilmu yang lain. Tidak mungkin anak-anak akan dapat menimba ilmu dengan baik sekiranya dia tidak boleh membaca. Ini kerana apa sahaja ilmu baik Matematik, Sains, Bahasa dan lain-lain memerlukan anak-anak menterjemah “kumpulan simbol-simbol” (yang kita panggil “perkataan”) yang memberikan maklumat tentang ilmu yang disampaikan.

Menurut kajian… ramai murid yang gagal mempamerkan kemajuan atau kecemerlangan dalam akademik dan peperiksaan adalah berpunca dari kegagalan mereka menguasai kemahiran membaca. Murid yang merangkak-rangkak dalam membaca sebenarnya menghabiskan terlalu banyak masa cuba mengenali perkataan sedang apa yang sepatutnya dilakukannya adalah memahami keseluruhan konteks ayat. Mereka mungkin boleh mengenali bunyi perkataan tetapi atas sebab yang dinyatakan tadi… mereka gagal memahami maklumat yang cuba disampaikan

Ini tentunya berbeza dengan anak-anak yang mahir dalam membaca di mana penterjemahaan simbol-simbol menjadi perkataan berlaku secara otomatik dan masa yang optimum dapat digunakan bagi menganalisa ayat-ayat yang mengandungi maklumat berguna.


Apa tanggungjawab kita sebagai ibu bapa?

Kita tidak seharusnya menyerahkan bulat-bulat pendidikan anak-anak kepada tadika dan sekolah semata-mata. Kita mesti proaktif dan memainkan peranan utama dalam pendidikan anak-anak. Dan ini mestilah bermula sedari awal dan bermula dari rumah.

Kesuntukan masa tidak boleh dijadikan alasan… kerana pendidikan anak-anak di peringkat awal ini sebenarnya tidak mengambil masa yang panjang. Kita hanya perlukan 5 – 20 minit setiap sessi.

Pilihlah bahan-bahan pendidikan yang baik seperti Bacalah Anakku, ReadEasy dan Al-Furqan yang telah dibentuk secara sistematik agar boleh digunakan oleh ibu-bapa bagi mengisi 5 – 20 minit ini dengan cara terbaik.

Contohnya… luangkan masa selepas solat untuk mengajar anak mengenali Al-Quran melalui sistem Al-Furqan. Hanya 5 minit diperlukan untuk setiap sessi. Atau luangkan 5 minit selepas makan malam atau sebelum tidur untuk mengajarnya membaca. Tak pun anda boleh pasang kaset/CD yang dibekalkan bersama-sama set-set pendidikan ini ketika di dalam kenderaan semasa dalam perjalanan menghantar anak-anak ke pusat asuhan atau semasa bersiar-siar sekeluarga.



Masa depan anak-anak di tangan kita. Berikan yang terbaik untuk mereka.

Read a story to your child

Remember, children learn best when reading is relaxed and enjoyable so give lots of praise.

Encourage your child to try to read any words they do not recognise by saying the sounds of each letter pattern separately (e.g. l-o-ng), then running the sounds together quickly. If they find it difficult to say the sounds, say the sounds for them first and then see if they can hear the word.

Explain that it is important when running the sounds in a word together to check to see if it sounds like a real word as some words are less regular (e.g. have). Read these words to your child if they don't recognise them. Point out the letters that make the usual sound in each word (e.g. the h in have)



Example phonic words:
bobtail, tail, tails, away, play, stingray, chase, shapes, snake, waves, whale, a, amazing, scaly, sees, three, whee, eat, eats, leap, peacock, be, he, she, happy, pony, puppy, stumpy, flies, like, likes, sizes, white, by, I'll, lion, burrow, show, go, going, opens, pony, so, goat, crocodile

Example context words:
of, have, all, to, do, her, wants, you, the