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5 Techniques To Accelerate Your Child's Literacy |
By:
David Morgan |
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5 Techniques to Accelerate Your Child's Literacy
by David Morgan
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 child that enjoys reading will consume 2-3 books a week. That can be 10-20 times more than an average reader and so the gap opens steadily between the two.
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 - Don't Read Books
I know that most children learn to read with books, but most also never become good readers, let alone excellent readers. Almost any child can become a good reader and there are simple reasons why they don't.
You see, a clever kid will look at an early reader book and memorise the words that keep being repeated, and guess the others from the context. That gives the impression of progress. But the child is driven 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
Your child needs to be familiar with the 43 phonemes we use. They are the little sounds that make up each word. You can find a list of them in any dictionary.
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
You don't want to start with a book. So where do you start?
Try these games, that work very well for us:
Build-A-Word. Get hold of some plastic letters and select 4 consonants and 2 vowels. Go over the sound of each one. Then say a simple and regular 3 letter word for your child to build with them (like mat, ten, fin or hit).
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. Using your plastic letters again, write a nonsense word, like leb, kib, teg, vod. Ask your child to try 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.
We see a new level of enthusiasm from day 1 and a leap in confidence over the first 3 weeks using these techniques. If you employ them, I am sure you will quickly see the difference.
To find further guidance on How To Help Your Child
Learn To Read come to our website www.EasyreadSystem.com You can get a unique content version of this article.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article54346.html |
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