Teaching Reading Basic Points

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The main principles of teaching your child to read should be to have fun; no prescriptive method need be absolutely applied if you follow some basic principals

These should be to:

• Teach letter recognition
• Teach the phonic sounds of letters and later on letter blending
• Make lessons frequent and fun, and short and in duration
• Use a reading scheme to develop and encourage your child's interest
• To encourage letter and word recognition use hand written flash cards and sentences to ensure that your child is actually reading and not memorising
• Discuss the story in a reading scheme to ensure the child comprehends what he or she is reading
• Ask questions about the story line or characters.
• If a child stumbles over a word, encourage them to sound out the word phonically and them give them the correct word only after they have made an attempt
• Don’t pre-empt failure and tell a child a word they are having problems with - make sure they at least try to pronounce it
• Never make derogatory remarks about monotone reading
• Always give lots of praise