How can I help my child to read? 5 educational tips

The ability to read is very useful to favor the linguistic and intellectual development of children, since reading stimulates a better expression of children's oral level, serves to enrich and improve their vocabulary and also encourages their learning about various topics and content from ages early.

In order to know how to help my child to read, a series of tips must be taken into account, such as these: prior learning of letters, learning to mix sounds through formation of syllables, reading of simple sentences and, finally, that he is able to give meaning to the reading of sentences and texts in order to improve his fluency and comprehension reader.

In this article you will find brief tips that can help you know how to help your child to read, with useful guidelines to support your educational development from home.

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The importance of knowing how to read from childhood

Knowing how to read correctly, meaning by this that we can read fluently and comprehensively, knowing what we have read, is essential because reading is one of the main tools that human beings have available to learn: communicate with others, keep up with the news and, among many other things, also for

understand most of our environment where we can find posters, labels, signs, instructions.

In short, there are words everywhere that serve as a guide to guide us in many moments.

In addition, reading is one of the fundamental bases of the education that we receive during a long stage of our lives, forming us academically to be able to access the world of work and also allows us to prepare for life in general through a series of knowledge, which They also serve as a basis for developing new skills and learningsince learning lasts a lifetime.

For all this, books can be of great help to us to acquire new knowledge, develop a greater vocabulary that It allows us to better understand things and also opens the doors to new stories, worlds and characters that we meet through everything. type of novels and essays, being a means to transmit certain stories much more complex and rich in details than the audiovisual; although this does not mean that you have to opt for one or the other, since you can enjoy both at the same time and expand your knowledge through the novel.

On the other hand, it is important that the child learns to see reading as a pleasure that helps him discover new worlds and an important tool to learn all kinds of interesting things and not as an obligation or an arduous task; because if the child does not get to enjoy reading, it will be difficult for him to arouse an interest in learning, thus making it difficult for him to develop a continuous reading habit over time.

That is why a series of tips and guidelines to follow to know how to help your child learn to develop their ability to read texts will be explained below.

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How to help your child to read: basic tips

It is important to act as role models, as children learn largely through imitation of their parents and older siblings, so It can be very helpful for parents to show the child the habit of reading daily so that he imitates that behavior. Before a child can read, it must be the parents who read stories to their child every day.

To arouse the child's interest in reading, it can be very helpful if we start by reading to him every night before he goes to sleep, as this could help make him curious about stories and tales, as well as being a good start for him to learn how to sing, make inflections in the voice when read.

On the other hand, beyond this kind of routines, keep in mind the guidelines that you will find below.

1. Teach him the letters

Teaching him the letters of the alphabet is a very good first step. It is not necessary that it always be done in alphabetical order, although it would be interesting learn the vowel letters at first to be able to start reading syllables or simple words in which the vowels appear next to the first letters consonants that he has been learning, to increase the level of difficulty as he progresses in learning the letters.

It is important to note that for the child to know a letter well, it must be capable of two things: first he must be able to identify it visually and secondly he must have memorized the sound that is associated with it to be able to pronounce it.

On the other hand, for the child to memorize each letter more easily at the beginning of his learning, you can It will be very useful for him to draw each letter he learns in a considerable size and then color it and cutout. You can also do another series of exercises (eg. building each letter she learns with clay) that help reinforce the learning of each letter, since a single exposure or through explanations is not enough for the child to memorize. This step is very important, so it requires not being in a hurry and adapting to the needs of the child.

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2. Mix the sounds by putting two letters together

The second thing to do is blend the sounds by putting two letters together to form a syllable. It is a step that is quite linked to the previous one, since when you have learned to recognize and pronounce the letters of the alphabet, you must immediately move on to reading words.

First we can start using simple words to point to each of the letters and we will pronounce the sound of each one. Then, we slowly slide our finger from the beginning of the word and towards the end in order to pronounce each of the syllables. Finally, we must ask the child to do it by himself without our help.

It is important to select simple words at the beginning, since for the moment the most important thing is that you stay with the sounds resulting from the formation of syllables.

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3. Work with words that contain the same lexeme

The third step to follow is to do exercises in which the child is presented with a series of words that contain the same lexeme (the invariable part of a word), so that he can reinforce the knowledge of word families and also so that he begins to associate certain sets of words with a certain topic (p. g., kitchen, cooking, cook or music, musician, musical, etc.).

This exercise can show the child that knowing how to read each letter and each syllable, he would be able to read words that he does not know or has never read.

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4. Begin to read simple sentences

The fourth step is carried out once you begin to master phonetic skills; by forming different syllables, he should begin to read simple sentences in order for him to develop reading comprehension.

This will be a crucial step where he will be able to start reading his first stories or, at least small fragments of them, at least that it is important that it is the child who selects what he wants to read in order to arouse his interest in reading even more.

5. Give meaning to the reading of sentences and texts

The fifth step to follow would start once the child is able to read simple sentences. Here we move on to reading longer sentences and texts, in order for the child to begin to derive meaning from what they readthus developing a better reading comprehension. The objective of this step is for the child to be able to get a key idea of ​​what is happening in the story that he is reading, being important that he is the one who chooses the story and that it is not complex.

In order for the child to develop a greater reading comprehension, you can help him by asking him questions about what is reading and also encouraging him to reread those sentences or fragments of the text that he has not it is understood.

Once all these steps have been mastered, the child should be encouraged to develop the habit of reading daily long enough to improve in reading. pronunciation, fluency and reading comprehension, thus reaching to select reading of increasingly complex books that provide greater enrichment.