5 Techniques to Accelerate Your Child's Literacy

Just learning to read is not enough if your child is going to compete in the modern information society. Becoming a good or excellent reader is the key to your child's future.

A young enthusiastic reader will get through 2-3 books every week. That might be 1000% more than your child is reading. And so a huge differential will open up.

So here are 5 things that will make a huge difference to your child's reading development. We employ all of them in our Easyread System:

TIP 1 - Avoid Early Reading Books

This may seem a bit crazy, but teaching a child to read with a book is a mistake. It's like teaching a child to catch a ball by playing basketball.

A bright child will look at the text and use the easiest approach, which is to memorise some words and guess the others. That seems to work OK at first, but leads to more and more guessing as the books get more complicated.

In due course, you will see an implosion of confidence and a total reluctance to do any more reading at all.

TIP 2 - "Dimensionalise" the Phonemes

Phonemes are the little sounds that make up words. And there are 43 of them in English. You can find them at the beginning of your dictionary. We need to make sure your child is familiar with them.

But phonemes are non-physical, abstract objects and very hard for your child to remember. So what we do is create strong visual characters to represent each one. For instance, for the sounds of the letter A we have the ants in pink pants, the ape in a cape and the ark in the park. Those are things your child can visualise and so remember.

The majority of your child's memory capacity is visual.

TIP 3 - Play These Games

So what should you use rather than a book?

Try these games, that work very well for us:

Build-A-Word. Take 6 plastic letters including 2 vowels. Revise the main sound of each one. Then say a simple 3 letter word that your child can built with these letters, like bed, dog, fat or mop.

Select-A-Word. Write three very similar words, like hat, mat and map. Say one of them and ask your child to select which one it is.

Nonsense Words. This time, use your plastic letters to write a simple nonsense word like gab, hin, mub or wid. Ask your child to read it.

Easyread-I-Spy. This is just like the classic "I spy with my little eye..." game, except that you use the first sound of the word rather than the first letter.

TIP 4 - Less is More

Never do more than 15 minutes of reading practise at a go. Any more and your child's concentration level will begin to dip.

TIP 5 - Try Easyread TrainerText

TrainerText is a system we use to make ongoing reading practise much easier for the child. We float the visual images that we have created for each phoneme above the text, so that there is a clue to the sounds in each word. You can use the images you have created for Tip 2 to do the same.

The great thing with TrainerText is that your child can work through the text without getting stuck and needing help. That is marvellous for developing confidence and self-esteem.

Using this sort of approach, we see a new engagement with reading immediately and then a surge of confidence over the first 21 days. If you use these tips I am sure you will see the same thing.

Article Source: http://www.christiannotepad.com

To find more guidance on How To Help Your Child Learn To Read come to our website www.EasyreadSystem.com
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