Previous reading blogs have been written to prepare your child for reading. I have discussed experiences, oral language, concepts of print, picture interpretation and phonics. Today I am going to show you a strategy that will rapidly improve reading success. Your child will improve reading results at a pace that you won’t believe possible.

It is well known that good readers think about meaning while poor readers think about words and sounding. All are important but this one strategy will fast track your child.

Here we go on the journey of a lifetime! Reading is about three things: meaning, grammar and phonics. When a child uses all of these skills to work out an unknown word, improved reading results is the prize.

Meaning is about the child’s experiences related to the topic, the meaning of the picture, the meaning of the reading, the sentence and the words. Grammar is about the order of the words (a simplistic explanation). The child would unconsciously know that the word, “the” is followed by the name of something; that “is” precedes an action word most of the time, and that the word “on” will be followed by the name of an item or thing. Phonics is the letter sounds in words. In predicting words the child uses the first sound of the word to work out the word.

In a simple statement, here is the strategy. When a child comes to a word that he doesn’t know he says the first sound of that word and continues reading. Then goes back and predicts (which is a calculated guess) the word and sees if it makes sense.  An example is below:

The boy is swinging on the tyre.

The child interprets the picture and actually talks about the things in the picture because the picture tells about the words and the words tell about the picture. Once this step is completed show the child what you want done. The little words direct the child to the words that he won’t know. Unconsciously, the child will know that the word “the” comes before the name of something, in this case the person on the swing. So this is what you show him.

Now the child can go back and predict the words that were unknown with the support of the first sounds, meaning and grammar. How cool is that!!!!

Have a great week, Letterbox wants the very best for your child.