Top Tips for Teaching Your Child to Read

Reading is an essential part of communication and there are many benefits that it offers. It improves brain development and instils a love for learning. Teaching children to read, however, can be quite the challenge. It requires practise, attention and lots of patience. To help parents, a prep school in Middlesex shared their top tips for teaching children to read. You can find these tips below.

Master The Basics

Phonetics are the building blocks for reading and making sure that your child is confident on them can help them with their reading. Moving on too soon can lead to them feeling frustrated and make learning to read more difficult than it should be.

Play Snap

Phonetics cards can help children when starting to blend words and help them remember sounds. You can create the cards together and illustrate them with objects starting with the same sound to offer clues. This interactive method will get them reading in no time.

Be Patient

Reading comes to us naturally and takes far longer for children. There are lots of small steps that need to be taken before they can start reading. There’s sounding which involves identifying the sounds that different letters make and blending which is how they merge those sounds together. Blending can be tricky for children but it’s important to be patient. Sound the letters of words as many times as necessary for them to be able to hear the words being made. 

Sound Quickly

When helping your child to blend, try to sound words quickly. This will help to make them more obvious and apparent. 

Use Real Life Examples

There are lots of everyday examples that you can use to teach your child their phonetics. By pointing them out and asking questions, you can improve their understanding and help them build connections which will benefit them when learning to read.