Summer Vacation Goals: Helping Your Child Become a Reader
Teaching a child to love reading might be one of the toughest task for a parent especially if takes most of their time. In my years of teaching elementary, I’ve had students that cannot read at their own grade level. This is a big concern for me as a teacher and to some parents. As a teacher we know what we need to do to help our students read and develop the habit of reading. However, do parents know what they need to do in order to help their child read?
According to parents that I’ve talk with why their child loves reading, they have mentioned several tips; (some of the tips are also found in some parenting guideline)
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Read with your child before bedtime.
Parents should at least spend time with their child reading a story before going to bed. This makes strong bond between a parent and a child. Through this you can ask questions to your child and know their comprehension level. There is a saying from an unknown person that says “A child who reads will be an adult who thinks.”
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Have your child read to you.
Asking your child read to you helps them with their speaking and oral reading. Through this you can guide your child with words that he/she is having hard time to read.
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Schedule a quiet reading time.
Train your child to have a quiet reading time until they get into the routine. You can start with 15 minutes every day then increase it little by little until they find the joy of reading books. When they are reading, make sure you are reading as well because they see you as an example.
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Use reward system.
Make an agreement with your child that in every book he/she reads is equals to a point that he needs to earn a reward. Make the rewards something that the family can all do together as recreation to develop stronger bond.
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Buy books that interest your child.
Children are motivated to read books that interest them most especially if it’s a book turned into movie or the other way.
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Visit the library
Visiting the library will help you teach your child the importance of it. Through it, you can build a mini library at home to books that your child had already read. This will remind them of their achievement in reading such books.
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Lesser time for video games.
Videogames is merely for entertainment and doesn’t teach a lot of things. Sometimes you hear cursing and inappropriate words that a child learns. You would rather see your child grow in knowledge and in wisdom of what he /she reads rather than learn stuffs that will not benefit to his development as a person.
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Join a reading club.
Some schools offer reading club and they have certain names to it. Check around your neighbourhood if there’s a school that offers such club. Some of them are seasonal most like likely in the summer like Language Arts camp. It would always be nice to keep up academically during the summer break rather than just spending all of it into playing and watching movies.
