10 Steps to Teach a Child How to Read

In this post, we are going to provide you 10 effective steps using which you can teach a child how to read from a very early age so that they can learn this skill before going to school.

In our previous post, we have discussed how to teach your kid to read at home in detail, however, in this post, we will be providing you some brief methods and tips that will help you to make your child a good reader.

Reading books is very good for the brain development of children and it is wise to make them familiar with this particular skill as early as possible because children absorb information very quickly.

So here are the 10 steps on how to teach a child to read:-

1 – They Need an Example

Young children learn most of the things in their life by observing their parents and other people in their surroundings. Imitation is the first step towards learning and kids learn their basic skills by copying the actions of others.

So, become an avid reader and make use of the written materials in front of the kids, this will generate the curiosity in them and they will start to take interest in this activity.

2 – Frequent Reading

Read to your kids as much as possible and whenever you read in front of them do it loudly by pointing towards the words. Repetition is a key factor in learning, once your kid’s brain associates various sounds with certain meanings, it becomes easy for your kid to read. Moreover, reading some good books to children have a very positive impact on their mind.

3 – Story Telling

Kids love to hear stories and it gives you an excellent opportunity to teach them how to read. When you tell them stories, try to point towards the book and tell them about what is written in the pages and what it means.

4 – Creativity and Fun

Whenever you are willing to teach a kid any new skill, they will only take the interest when it is a fun activity for them. A child’s brain learns things quicker when it is interesting for them.

Hence, you should find out the ways using which you can make your child interested in books. You should find out the methods that best work on your kids and use your own creativity to engage them in this activity.

5 – Making Use of the Visuals

Children are more attracted to pictures and visuals rather than words. Making use of visuals as much as possible to explain to them about the story or whatever they are reading in a book helps them to learn the language quickly. This is why making use of puppets to tell stories is a very effective method to teach kids about the meaning of the words.

Here’s a video of a song for example that uses sight words to teach kids how to read:-

 

6 – Questions

It is not just enough to read a story to a kid but in order to make sure that they have understood what you have been reading to them as well as to generate curiosity in them, it is very important to ask them questions after every session.

Once your kid knows that you will ask questions after every reading session, they will begin to participate more enthusiastically and they will pay more attention to what you are reading to them.

7 – Discussion

You should focus on keeping your kid’s interest towards written materials and to do this you will have to discuss frequently about the books that you have been reading to them and you can also involve them whenever you are reading a book, newspaper etc.

8 – Fun with Rhyming

Kids love rhymes and one of the basic steps towards learning how to read is to teach kids some easy to repeat rhymes.

Allow them to play naturally with the sound of the words and encourage them to repeat the rhymes as much as possible.

9 – Alphabet Games

Learning alphabets is an important part of reading, but for young kids, it is a very tedious and boring task. Hence you can make use of various alphabets games that are now available like “the floating bathtub alphabet toys“.

10 – Phonics Approach

One of the most effective ways to teach children how to read is to use the concept of phonics. Phonemic awareness is basically all about making kids familiar with various kind of word sound association. It gives them a clear idea about what kind of sounds are made by various letters, the 26 letters in the English language can produce about 44 different sounds.

This approach is a new technique that has been working exceptionally better than any of the conventional methods that have been used in the classrooms for years.

In order to learn more about how to teach the reading skills to kids using phonemic awareness, we suggest you to try out the program named “child learning reading” which has become very popular these days due to the success this program has achieved in helping parents to teach their kids how to read using the methodology based on phonemic awareness.

 

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