Reading

1. Read aloud daily to your child.

2. Listen to your child read to you.

3. Encourage your child to spend time silent reading.

4. Encourage your child to use a variety of strategies when he/she comes to an unfamiliar word. Strategies include using what you know about sounds (phonics), breaking the word apart (by syllables), skipping the word and using the context of the sentence to help decode it.

5. Discuss the meaning of new or unfamiliar words.

6. Ask your child critical thinking questions about what is being read. Examples: What would you do if your were the character? What is the main idea of the story?

7. Have your child summarize the story or sequence the events in the story.

8. Provide a variety of reading materials such as books, poems, magazines and plays.

9. Provide your child with reference materials such as a children's dictionary, encyclopedia, or an atlas.

10. Play games by changing beginning, middle and ending sounds of words, i.e.bat-hat, bat-bit, bat-bar

11. Encourage comprehension by helping your child understand that we read for meaning.