Although I’m retired from teaching I haven’t lost my interest in children and their literacy. I can’t think of a single life skill more important than fluent reading with solid comprehension. If a child can read he can learn anything. If a child can read and understand, she can rule the world.
Well, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but reading with understanding is the difference between a happy and successful learner and a withdrawn, discouraged one.
Homegrown Readers is a compilation of a series of articles I wrote on the most important ways adults can support children as they learn to read. It’s all the things that teachers know to do and parents often don’t. While most parents would give their eye teeth if their children were fluent readers, they don’t know how to help them.
Most begin with reading to their children, teaching them the alphabet and then going on to phonetic work. That’s great. But it’s not enough. English is a language with so many exceptions to the phonetic rules, that nearly half of our words don’t follow them.
For children with any visual memory problems, any learning disabilities and any fears or undue pressures placed on them, reading gets to be a scary venture. And as they have stressful reading experiences, they begin to build up a wall that keeps them from reading success.
What can you say when your child gets stuck? How can you encourage a discouraged reader? How can you keep your children reading over the summer so the skills they learned in Kindergarten, first or second grade aren’t lost over those long weeks of summer fun?
Homegrown Readers gives parents simple, non-threatening ways to help their children build solid reading and comprehension skills. It’s on sale today at Amazon. Take a look.
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