Mar 10 2019
How To Help A Child Finding It Difficult To Read
What To Do When Your Child Is Struggling To Read
As a parent, you want the absolute best for your child. This means doing whatever you can to aid them when they are struggling. For some kids, the act of reading can be difficult. Since reading is a primary function of learning, this can lead to children feeling isolated and frustrated. Luckily there are mechanisms available for parents to utilize that can assist their children. Regardless of the child’s age, the first step should be to determine their reading level. There are free reading screening assessments available for this. Once known, other steps can be taken.
Address Their Anxiety
The first thing that you will want to address is their anxiety. A child struggling to read will undoubtedly be feeling a number of things including frustration, uneasiness, and the feeling that they are dumb. It is important to reassure them that they are ok so that they can settle down and focus on getting past their difficulties.
Implement Reading Aids
Children struggling to read will require more work and time than other children to gain the same results. As parents, you can help this process by implementing reading aids to reinforce what they are learning in school. These aids should be geared towards helping children focus on specific text, concentrate on specific words, and to easily transition from one line to the next.
Bring In Outside Help
Another option that is always available is to bring in extra help. This can come in a few forms. Good communication with the child’s teacher can lead to extra time and help to occur at school. Another option is to hire a tutor who specializes in helping kids with reading. This may be a better option because it provides personalized one on one time and attention. A tutor is better situated to identify and correct reading issues as they arise.
Children who struggle with reading isn’t an uncommon occurrence. It is important to ensure them that having this issue doesn’t make them less than other kids. They simply may have to put in a bit more work to obtain the same results.
Jul 16 2019
Learning to read: The classic mistakes
It’s something that most of us take for granted. After all, learning to read is embedded in the school syllabus and most of us have mastered it from a young age.
Of course, not everyone is so lucky. In fact, in the US alone there are understood to be around 32 million adults who can’t read.
In truth, it doesn’t matter how old you are, very similar principles exist. There are specially designed books for kids who are learning to read, but the approaches for adults can be the same. The classic mistakes tend to stick through generations as well, and this is what the remainder of today’s post will now focus on.
Mistake #1 – You guess words
This first mistake usually occurs when a person has started to grasp reading – and can sometimes occur completely naturally. In other words, you don’t even realise you are doing it.
Particularly if a topic is quite familiar to you, you can start to find that you guess the words. It means that you’re not actually reading the word, and had it been on a standalone page there’s every chance that you wouldn’t recognize it. This is something that can usually be identified quite early on as naturally, not all guesses when read aloud are correct.
Mistake #2 – Letter confusion
Like a lot of mistakes, this is something that a lot of people won’t appreciate. However, for someone who is just learning how to read, it can become very easy to confuse letters between each other.
In other words, words beginning with one letter are pronounced like they start with another. “B” and “D”, in lower-case form, often fall into this category.
This is something that tends to affect children more, and it’s completely normal. After all, they have a lot of information to remember, and small slips like this are almost to be expected.
Mistake #3 – Memorizing text
This next mistake is actually very similar to the first one we touched upon. However, instead of guessing text, you are simply remembering it.
Ultimately, this isn’t going to occur frequently, but it highlights the importance of trying to only read new books and not simply repeat the same one over and over again. Otherwise, it’s almost like memorising song lyrics – and this is something that anyone can do.
Mistake #4 – Not reading from left to right
Finally, this is another mistake which might sound utterly simple. As it turns out, a lot of people who have not learned to read can slip into the habit of reading words from right to left. It means that they are tracking the word incorrectly – and fall into the trap of sounding out a letter that’s towards the end of said word.
So, how do you combat such a problem? It’s simply about tracking the words with your finger. Over time, some young readers start to do this themselves, so the process of reading words from left to right just becomes completely normal.
By admin • Childhood Education • • Tags: adults, easy, habit, importance, kids, learning, reading, school, simple, US