Things to Help a 4yr Old Learn to Read

Education your kid to read tin can be ane of the most rewarding experiences of your life! Here we share 10 tips on how to teach a child to read, from pre-readers all the way to school-age children!

When Do Kids Larn To Read?

As a former kickoff course teacher, teaching children to read is one of my greatest passions! Just considering most children don't showtime actually "reading" until effectually 6 years old (which is upwards of the targeted age range for my blog), I didn't want parents to feel pressured that their 3-year old needs to beginning reading (which, past the way, they don't!). However, the information shared below is general data that is beneficial for children of all ages, whether your kid is ready to read or not. Don't implement all of these strategies at once, nor should you expect your child to be able to practice everything right away. Learning to read is a process and the information below is only for you to implement when y'all feelyour child is ready.

Once your child is ready to begin reading, you will need to find a systematic and explicit programme that teaches phonemic awareness and phonics. This is essential. Learning to read is similar breaking a zero lawmaking (and opposite to what the title of this mail suggests, information technology is Not easy). Every child must learn the code and it makes the most sense to teach this explicitly rather than depending on kids figuring it out on their own. Please also recognize that although the suggestions below are labeled equally "steps", they are not necessarily in sequent guild, nor are they in social club of importance. The information you volition find here is only a guide to help you encounter how each of the components of reading fit together for your pre-reader. If your child is school-aged and yous are looking for a curriculum on how to teach a kid to read, I highly recommend Pathways to Reading Homeschool.

How To Teach a Child To Read

1. Read Aloudto your kid

Instruction your child to read is truly a process that begins at infancy. No, I am nigh certainly Not advocating programs that claim to teach your baby to read using flashcards! What I AM encouraging you to practice is to begin reading with your newborn within days of welcoming her home! Not only is ongoing reading time building a special bonding time for the ii of you lot, it instills in her a love for books. Enjoyment while reading is i of the single greatest predictors of reading success in school-age children. If children don't larn from an early age to enjoy reading, information technology will most probable hinder their power sometime down the road.

How much you read to your kid is completely up to you and your family, but I suggest you aim to read at least 3-four books a day, even while your child is very young. As she gets a picayune older and can sit for longer stretches of time, make it a family goal to read together for at least twenty-minutes each day.

Here are a few suggestions for the types of books to read to your child. But past all means, read whatever your child responds to and enjoys!

Birth-1 Year: Lullabies, Board Books (with existent pictures), Cloth Books (with diverse textures), Song Books
ane Year-iii Years: Rhyming Books, Vocal Books, Short-Story Board Books
3 Years-5 Years: Alphabet Books, Song Books, Pic Books, Rhyming Books

ii. Enquire questions

Asking questions while reading to your child is not just slap-up for encouraging your child to collaborate with the book, but information technology is likewise extremely effective in developing his ability to encompass what he is reading. You lot run into, if our main objective in "reading" is getting our child to "sound out" words, nosotros have missed the gunkhole entirely. Even children who can decode words and "read" with great fluency still might not be able to comprehend what they are reading. If a kid can't cover what he is reading, there actually is no point to reading at all!

While your child is a baby, ask him questions such as, "Exercise you meet the true cat?" while pointing at the film of the true cat. This volition not only develop his vocabulary, it will also encourage him to collaborate with the book that he is reading. As he gets older, ask him to point to things in the book himself and make the noises of the animals he sees.

Once your child is about 2 or 3-years of age, begin request questions before, during, and after reading the volume. Show your child the comprehend of the volume and enquire him what he thinks the story is going to be almost (predicting). While reading, ask him what he thinks is going to happen in the story or why he thinks a character made a item choice (inferring). If a character is depicting a stiff emotion, identify that emotion and ask your child if he has ever felt that style (connecting). At the finish of the volume, inquire if his prediction(southward) came true. Afterwards, ask him to tell you lot what he remembered happening in the book (summarizing).

Modifying each of these techniques during read-alouds to see the developmental stage of your child is a great style to promote and increase reading comprehension!

three. Be a skilful (reading) example

Fifty-fifty if your kid is fascinated with books from an early age, her fascination will quickly dwindle if she does non meet reading modeled in her home. If you are not an avid reader yourself, brand a witting effort to allow your children see you reading for at least a few minutes each day! Read a mag, a cookbook, a novel, your Bible…information technology'south up to you! But bear witness your child that reading is something that even adults need to do. If you take a son, share this commodity with your married man. Sons need to see their fathers read, specially since it is not something that immature energetic boys are naturally prone to doing.

As parents, nosotros can sometimes get wrapped up with what exactly our children should exist doing to exist successful. Just nosotros oft forget that children frequently acquire past example. Grab a book and take a load off…for your kid'due south sake, of course!

4. Identify letters in natural settings

Before our boys were born, we painted and hung large wooden letters spelling their proper name above the cribs as a decorative accent in their rooms. I would have never guessed that those wooden messages would accept such a learning incentive for Big Brother! Around historic period 2.5, he began request what messages were higher up his name. That'southward honestly how he learned to spell his name…and he can spell his brother's proper name besides because he has taken an interest in his letters as well. In technical terms, this is called "environmental print" and includes all of the print we are surrounded by–fast food signs, labels, traffic signs, clothing, magazines, etc.

Often times, we desire to force our children to acquire letter names by a certain age. We buy flashcards or DVDs claiming to teach our children their letters. We drill our ii-year onetime over and over for minutes on stop. Don't buy into this…allow your child to be a kid and accept advantage of the "teachable moments" as they come up along! Children'southward minds are like sponges and are certainly capable of memorizing the alphabet from drilling, only that'south not the most effective method that will produce the best long-term results. Your kid volition be curious almost the print he sees around him and will enquire questions. That'south your chance to jump in with a practical application that actually has real meaning and significance to your child.

Don't misunderstand me and think that I don't think learning the alphabet is important. It is certainly important…just the method in which nosotros teach them is even more important! Always go along in mind that our ultimate goal is to foster a lifelong learner who loves to read, non a child who has simply memorized without any significance.

5. Incorporate multiple domains of development

Children acquire best when multiple senses or areas of development are included. That'south why hands-on learning produces longer retention and more meaningful application. Once your child has shown an interest in letters and you take already begun to apply natural settings for identifying those letters, begin implementing activities that incorporate as many senses equally possible. Keep in mind that learning letter names isn't nearly as important every bit learning their sounds!

There are a plethora of means to contain multiple domains of development in regards to alphabetic character recognition and early-reading skills. Alphabet crafts allow your child to learn the shape of a letter of the alphabet along with an clan of the sound information technology makes all the while utilizing fine motor skills in the procedure of cutting, gluing, and creating! Playing games that involve gross motor skills (similar tossing beanbags on the appropriate letter) are also wonderful means to include movement. Of course, every child loves songs and rhymes! Take an inventory of your child's strengths and areas of interest and target activities to fit them!

six. Classify the Genre

Once your child is effectually 5 and can recognize the difference between real and make-believe, I would suggest starting to assistance your child understand diverse genres of books during your reading time together. This might seem complicated, only information technology's actually not. At that place are around v unlike genres of children's books that I would encourage you lot to point out to your little i. Of course yous can use the term "type" rather than "genre" if that is easier to remember.

Nonfiction (real stories or facts about animals, places, people, etc)
Fantasy (brand-believe, can't happen in real life because of magic, talking animals, etc)
Realistic Fiction (a fabricated-up story, only it could technically happen in real life considering the characters and situations arebelievable)
Alphabet Books
Song Books

When children classify a book into a certain genre, they have to first summarize the volume in their head and think details. Then they have to use that data to determine which type of genre that particular books fits into. Finally, your child will be recalling details from other books in the aforementioned genre, making connections betwixt the two. This unproblematic activity that might take v-ten seconds of your time afterwards reading a volume only it certainly packs a punch of thought and processing in that young brain!

Besides, it's of import to note that not all books will fit into one of these genres, peculiarly books that are considered "phonics readers." I would propose that you do this exercise only with high-quality children'southward literature, not with books that are attempting to get your kid to "audio-out" on their ain. Nearly moving picture books found in children's libraries volition fit into one of these genres.

Remember, our goal is for our children to acquire to embrace what they're reading…otherwise reading will honestly do them lilliputian adept. When we encourage our children to retrieve about and process the book we've just read together, we are inadvertently modeling what we hope they'll one twenty-four hour period do independently!

7. Focus on Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

"Phonemes" are the smallest sounds in the English (become here for a complete list of phonemes). These sounds are made up of consonants, curt vowels, long vowels, and digraphs. "Phonemic Sensation" consists of learning those sounds and how to dispense them inside a give-and-take. Digraphs are unique sounds comprised of individual letters similar /th/, /sh/, /ch/, etc.

"Phonics" includes learning how to spell those sounds and the various rules that the English language follows. Learning the rules of phonics is an essential tool that helps a child learn to decode and spell. I used the Pathways To Reading program in the classroom as my phonemic sensation and phonics program and loved it! It made learning all of the tricky spellings so much fun! Pathways now has a homeschool version, which is amazing!

9. Decoding

Decoding is often referred to equally "sounding it out." Once your child knows the sounds each letter of the alphabet makes (which is taught in real, meaningful situations), she is ready to begin putting words together. Decoding is a process that requires strong phonemic awareness skills and gives way to orthographic mapping, the process by which words are stored as "sight words" in long-term memory.

Every bit children decode words with more frequency, they will become more proficient at automatically identifying that word. Researchers say it can take between ane-4 exposures of decoding before a word is transferred to long-term retention for automatic retrieval. Sometimes this chore is wearisome, and can't be short-changed, then it's important to find creative ways to make it fun. When I taught first grade, I used to buy niggling finger puppets that my students could apply to point to the letters as they were decoding. This was a huge hit and made this process so much fun!

10. Utilize a reading plan with explicit, systematic instruction once he/she is in kindergarten and beyond

Nearly of the skills upward to this signal are what I would consider "pre-reader" skills that we, as parents, can work on during our child's earliest years to make the process of learning to read much easier for our children. In one case your child reaches school-age, be sure that you lot are using a program rooted in the science of reading, with explicit and systematic instruction in both phonemic awareness and phonics. If your child is headed to school, ask to expect over the curriculum to ensure information technology is strong in these areas specifically. Some children will naturally learn the phonetic code more easily than others, every bit Nancy Young's Reading Ladder suggests, just ALL children benefit from early on code-based instruction.

There is no better foundational reading program, in my opinion, than Pathways to Reading. The original curriculum has been used in classrooms and clinical settings for the last 20 years. The plan has been involved in numerous research studies, showing statistically meaning results. Pathways to Reading Homeschool now offers their groundbreaking curriculum for home educators, starting with Basic Foundational Reading (which is the equivalent of kindergarten-age instruction). All 5 areas of reading teaching, equally identified past the National Reading Panel, are incorporated: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension. This is such an incredible resource for families and I can't recommend it highly enough!

Learning To Read is a Journeying

In summary, hither are some practical suggestions you tin can implement every 24-hour interval based on the learning to read strategies shared with yous in this mail. Plain, you tin can't implement all of these suggestions with children of all ages, so employ your judgement about what is the all-time fashion to teach a child to read.

Read to your kid every day!
Ask your kid questions before, during, and later reading.
Let your child meet you reading.
Look for letters while out and about and in the environment around you.
When teaching messages and letter sounds, contain equally many senses equally possible.
Read a diverseness of books and make a game out of guessing the genre.
Have fun rhyming
Play these oral phonemic awareness games together (no materials required)
Encourage your child to audio out short words (consonant, vowel, consonant).
Nigh of all, have fun together!

This post was first published Feb 2012. Updated 2018.

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Source: https://www.icanteachmychild.com/10-steps-to-teaching-your-child-to-read/