How to Support Your Child to Become a Confident Reader

Developing the foundation skills are essential when supporting your child with their reading fluency. With the numerous gaps in the education curriculum over the past couple of years, it is clear that the absence of consistent education has affected children within classrooms throughout the UK. Although some children have continued to thrive with their reading skills, others have returned to school in need of further support with their vocabulary and overall reading fluency. Identifying any learning difficulties early is paramount to improving your child’s confidence and helping to develop a love of reading. Some ways in which you can begin to develop a love of reading at home include:

1) Read Together

Some of the earliest objectives in teaching, when supporting children with their reading, involve the introduction of a child to stories. Making bed time stories a regular habit will help to familiarise your child with creating meaning out of words. By pointing to the words and showing that each letter, or a group of words, has meaning allows the child to associate stories and words in an enjoyable way. Also, allowing children to interpret the story from the pictures gives them an opportunity to develop an initial understanding of story–telling which forms one of the first building blocks to nurturing early reading skills.

2) Phonics

Having been introduced as recently as 2005, phonics has become the focal point of children’s initial reading fluency with schools across the UK. Phonics has been developed to support children’s early understanding of letters and sounds. This may be taught through different methods such as ‘Jolly Phonics’, ‘Letters and Sounds’ or ‘Read Write Inc’. Different schools undertake slightly differing approaches when introducing phonics within Early Years and Key Stage 1. Supporting your child at home with phonics sounds, phonics flash cards and blending activities can help to bolster their reading success.

3) Questions?

Once your child begins to develop confidence with their reading fluency, it is important to delve deeper within the story itself. Asking your child questions about the story, including how the characters might feel and predicting events, helps your child to further develop their comprehension skills. At Eden Tutors, our tutors regularly use Blooms Taxonomy to support a child’s understanding of the text and classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. During group and ‘one to one’ tutoring sessions, we introduce a variety of questions to challenge children to discuss the text using a well–rounded approach towards comprehension skills.

4) Practice Makes Perfect

Whether providing tutoring sessions or supporting your child further at home, the most important key to success is regular practise. Children who read more regularly have a greater chance of developing excellent reading skills. Even if your child reads for 10 minutes a day, this will ultimately benefit their overall reading fluency and comprehension skills. Additionally, your child doesn’t have to be limited to reading set texts provided by the school. Keeping your child engaged with different reading materials can also help to instil a love of reading that will benefit them in years to come!