Is Your Young Person a Reader?

Schools have an obligation to teach every child to read by using the most efficient and effective method possible. There is only one way to teach children or adults to read a language that has an alphabet and that one way is methodical instruction in phonics.  Phonics is the Code in which English speech is written down using its alphabetical letters to represent the sounds of speech so that the writer, or another person, can then read back what was written.

This task of teaching a child to read is best begun once the child has attained a verbal and emotional age of six (6) years.  While waiting for that magical age to arrive, each child should have listened to live people…preferably parents, grandparents, and teachers…read aloud and discuss hundreds of age appropriate stories to provide the child with hundreds of opportunities to experience characters, events, settings, and plots.  Such mediated book experiences also provide chances for a child to develop precise speech and sound awareness, a broad vocabulary base, complex concept comprehension, and vital pre-reading skills such as recognition of the ABCs and the knowledge that each story has a beginning, middle, and end.

year-old verbal and emotional level); then 3)and expected to repeatedly practice phonics with cursive writing and reading books.

As soon as your child is reading the practice stories at a 5th-6th-grade level, add a novel to the lesson plans, taking turns reading aloud, discussing the meaning and new vocab words.  I suggest these two books, even for the girls:  Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli, and Danny, The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl.  The books will be about boys younger than your child  but the stories are fun and interesting.  My senior girls even enjoyed both books!

Continue to teach the phonics and other lessons. Continue to do the three-minute readings, working your way through the book. Go back and study any lesson or reread any story that can be of benefit.

As reading and confidence develop, give freedom to choose reading materials from areas of interests, even if there is a rejection of novels.  I changed one high school student’s life after I overheard him discussing photography with his counselor.  I whispered to the school librarian, who gave him a pile of old Photography Today magazines. The boy began reading those, thus getting more reading practice, so his reading skills improved.  Never one who had been interested in college, he not only went on to university, he graduated from the University of Iowa. 

Encourage your child to read about anything…snakes, snails, coins, motorcycles, car repairs, travel, ghosts, 4-wheelers, snowmobiles,…It does not matter. Each former nonreader needs to read for practice, and needs to read to develop a knowledge base.  Another of my students began his reading career as an 11^th grader when I bought him two books on Tu Pac.  If you are able to get your student to read another novel once courage grows, encourage the reading of a series and challenge them to try to read every book!  When a new reader reads a series, say The Hardy Boys Mysteries by Dixon, the extensive reading practice trains the brain to the flow of reading.  That training makes reading easier and the series often teaches the love of books and turns another person into a lifelong reader!  For more information on the value of reading book series, read this.

You will do just fine as your child’s reading teacher.  You two will build a new life’s foundation together.

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