Primary School Prep DIY Guide-Reading-Page 10

BOOKS

 

How do you move your child through the book stages?

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Read at least one book a day on at least five days per week.

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Read the books as you did the phrases and sentences. Point to the words and read them out as you point to them.

You know your child is ready to move to the next stage of books when they are able to read out aloud the words on the page. If your child cannot speak yet, then when they are able to point to the words in order. For example; the sentence, “The hat is red”. If you ask them to point to “the” and they point to it and then you ask them to point to “hat” and they point to it, and then you ask them to point to “is” and they point to it, and then you ask them to point to “red” and they point to it, you know that even though they cannot read it out aloud, they know the words. When they are doing this with most sentences in most books in that stage of books, then you know it is time to move to the next stage of books. Even if your child can speak, it doesn’t mean that they are ready to read out aloud. It just doesn’t work that way, because every child is different. They may, however, know the words and you should not wait for them to read out aloud before moving to the next stage if they are recognising the words as outlined above.

 

How they will read words they have never seen before  

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• When your child starts reading books and especially when they start reading out aloud, you are going to notice something. You are going to notice that when they get to a word that they have never seen before, they will in many cases try to pronounce the word. 
   

• You will wonder how they are trying to do this since you have never taught them phonics. This is because they automatically learn how patterns of letters sound when they were learning singles, couplets, phrases and sentences. You will notice that for example, if they know the word “frog”, they will automatically learn how “fr” sounds. So, if they come across a word they have never seen before such as, “fridge”, you will hear them trying to pronounce the “fr” part of “fridge” because they already know it.
   

Final Word on Reading
 

What we are teaching you above is not theory; it is what we have done ourselves with our children and we have seen others do for their children. It doesn’t work sometimes, it works 100% of the time, so long as your child does not have a sight or hearing disability. However, it is not easy and you will need to put in a lot of work., You will need to have patience and  faith that it will work, especially at times when it seems as though nothing is happening. Please persist during those hard times and don’t give up on your child. Teaching your  child to read while they are babies/toddlers will have a significant impact on their academic abilities in the future. It will be worth it when you see the results and you will be happy that you persisted during the tough times.

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As always you are welcome to access Primary School Prep Done 4U if you have any doubts about whether you can successfully do the teaching yourself or if after reviewing this guide you prefer to let us take the effort and pressure of doing the teaching off you.  

 

END OF PRIMARY SCHOOL PREP DIY READING GUIDE