Tips from a Reading Specialist: How to Make Your Struggling Child a Better Reader

Like many people, my early struggles in life helped shape me into the person I am today. I became a Reading Specialist because of reading problems I had as a child. I can still recall being in first grade and facing the humility of being the worst reader in my class. My parents had a total of nine kids, so they didn’t really have extra time to sit down with me and read. Because of this, I could barely read but a few words.

After struggling so mightily that year in school, I spent the whole summer working on my reading skills. By the time I came back to school the following year, I was one of the top readers in class. Later in life, immediately after graduating with my Elementary Education degree, I completed my Masters in Reading and Literacy with a Reading Specialist certificate. My training allows me to diagnose, assess, and treat any sort of reading problem or true reading disability. Below are a few simple ways to make your child a better reader.

Help Choose Books at Their Current Reading Level

The main reason children will sometimes have some sort of reading problem is the difficulty of the book they are choosing. Listen to your child read the first few pages of every book. If they are not at least getting 9 out of every 10 words correct, then the book is too hard for them. It is putting them in the frustration level. They can’t enjoy reading a book if they can’t truly understand it.

Review Sight Words

There is a list of high-frequency words called Fry’s Sight Words that every child should know. The first 100 words on the list make up about 50 percent of all reading material you may come across. The first 300 words contain 65 percent of all the words you may come across in any sort of reading material. It is easy to see why having a child practicing these words with an adult can help improve their reading greatly.

Read More Often

One of the main culprits for a child struggling to read is that they just don’t read often enough. Just like everything else, you have to practice to get better at something. They must put all their skills they are learning to use, otherwise, they will soon forget how.

Systematic Phonics and Decoding

Phonics and decoding skills help people break down unfamiliar words so they can pronounce them correctly. Kids usually get a bit of this starting in kindergarten when they begin to learn what sounds go with which individual letters. Pretty soon, they can segment words so they are blending all the sounds to form actual words. There are numerous phonics and decoding workbooks out there. A quick search of Amazon will provide you plenty of good ones.

These are all ways to assist your child with improving their overall literacy skills. If you are not sure about something, or would like a qualified professional to help your child as well, iAchieve has tutoring programs for all your needs. Sometimes all it takes is another set of eyes to analyze the situation.

Written by Ryan Crawley

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