Teaching an 8 Year Old to Read

Didactics your kid to read can exist one of the nigh rewarding experiences of your life! Here nosotros share 10 tips on how to teach a kid to read, from pre-readers all the way to school-historic period children!

When Exercise Kids Learn To Read?

Every bit a former first course teacher, teaching children to read is one of my greatest passions! Only because virtually children don't start actually "reading" until around 6 years erstwhile (which is upwards of the targeted historic period range for my web log), I didn't want parents to feel pressured that their 3-twelvemonth one-time needs to start reading (which, by the way, they don't!). However, the information shared below is full general information 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 in one case, nor should yous expect your child to exist able to do everything right away. Learning to read is a process and the information beneath is simply for you to implement when y'all feelyour child is ready.

One time your kid is ready to brainstorm reading, y'all volition demand to discover a systematic and explicit program that teaches phonemic sensation and phonics. This is essential. Learning to read is like breaking a cipher lawmaking (and contrary to what the title of this post suggests, it is Not easy). Every child must larn the code and it makes the nearly sense to teach this explicitly rather than depending on kids figuring information technology out on their own. Please also recognize that although the suggestions below are labeled as "steps", they are not necessarily in consecutive order, nor are they in order of importance. The data you volition detect here is simply a guide to assist y'all see how each of the components of reading fit together for your pre-reader. If your child is school-aged and you are looking for a curriculum on how to teach a kid to read, I highly recommend Pathways to Reading Homeschool.

How To Teach a Kid To Read

1. Read Aloudto your child

Teaching your child to read is truly a procedure 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 y'all to exercise is to begin reading with your newborn within days of welcoming her home! Non merely is ongoing reading fourth dimension building a special bonding time for the two of yous, information technology instills in her a beloved for books. Enjoyment while reading is one of the single greatest predictors of reading success in school-age children. If children don't learn from an early age to enjoy reading, it will most likely hinder their power sometime down the road.

How much y'all read to your child is completely up to you and your family, but I suggest y'all aim to read at least 3-4 books a mean solar day, fifty-fifty while your kid is very young. As she gets a picayune older and can sit for longer stretches of fourth dimension, make information technology a family unit goal to read together for at to the lowest degree 20-minutes each day.

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

Birth-1 Year: Lullabies, Board Books (with real pictures), Fabric Books (with diverse textures), Song Books
1 Yr-3 Years: Rhyming Books, Vocal Books, Curt-Story Board Books
3 Years-v Years: Alphabet Books, Song Books, Picture Books, Rhyming Books

ii. Inquire questions

Asking questions while reading to your child is non only great for encouraging your child to interact with the volume, but it is as well extremely effective in developing his ability to comprehend what he is reading. You come across, if our primary objective in "reading" is getting our child to "sound out" words, we have missed the boat entirely. Even children who can decode words and "read" with great fluency still might not exist able to cover what they are reading. If a child can't comprehend what he is reading, there really is no point to reading at all!

While your child is a baby, ask him questions such equally, "Do you run into the cat?" while pointing at the picture show of the true cat. This will not but 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 kid is about two or 3-years of age, begin asking questions before, during, and after reading the volume. Prove your child the cover of the book and ask him what he thinks the story is going to be about (predicting). While reading, inquire him what he thinks is going to happen in the story or why he thinks a character made a particular choice (inferring). If a character is depicting a strong emotion, identify that emotion and ask your child if he has ever felt that mode (connecting). At the end of the book, ask if his prediction(southward) came true. Afterwards, ask him to tell y'all what he remembered happening in the book (summarizing).

Modifying each of these techniques during read-alouds to meet the developmental stage of your child is a great way to promote and increment reading comprehension!

iii. Be a good (reading) example

Even if your child is fascinated with books from an early age, her fascination will apace dwindle if she does not see reading modeled in her home. If you lot are non an gorging reader yourself, make a conscious endeavor to let your children encounter y'all reading for at least a few minutes each twenty-four hours! Read a magazine, a cookbook, a novel, your Bible…it's upwardly to you! Simply testify your child that reading is something that fifty-fifty adults need to do. If y'all have a son, share this commodity with your hubby. Sons need to come across their fathers read, especially since it is not something that young energetic boys are naturally prone to doing.

As parents, we can sometimes go wrapped up with what exactly our children should exist doing to exist successful. But we often forget that children often learn by example. Grab a book and have a load off…for your child's sake, of form!

4. Place letters in natural settings

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

Often times, we want to force our children to learn letter names past a certain age. We buy flashcards or DVDs claiming to teach our children their letters. We drill our two-year old over and over for minutes on terminate. Don't buy into this…permit your kid to be a kid and take reward of the "teachable moments" as they come forth! Children's minds are similar sponges and are certainly capable of memorizing the alphabet from drilling, but that's not the virtually constructive method that volition produce the best long-term results. Your child volition be curious near the print he sees around him and volition enquire questions. That's your chance to jump in with a practical application that actually has real significant and significance to your child.

Don't misunderstand me and call back that I don't think learning the alphabet is important. Information technology is certainly important…only the method in which we teach them is even more important! Always go on in heed that our ultimate goal is to foster a lifelong learner who loves to read, not a child who has merely memorized without any significance.

5. Incorporate multiple domains of development

Children learn best when multiple senses or areas of development are included. That'south why hands-on learning produces longer memory and more meaningful application. In one case your child has shown an interest in letters and you take already begun to apply natural settings for identifying those messages, begin implementing activities that contain as many senses equally possible. Thoueep in heed that learning letter names isn't about every bit important every bit learning their sounds!

In that location are a plethora of means to incorporate multiple domains of evolution in regards to letter of the alphabet recognition and early-reading skills. Alphabet crafts allow your child to learn the shape of a letter forth with an association of the sound it makes all the while utilizing fine motor skills in the procedure of cut, gluing, and creating! Playing games that involve gross motor skills (similar tossing beanbags on the appropriate letter of the alphabet) are also wonderful ways to include movement. Of course, every child loves songs and rhymes! Have an inventory of your child's strengths and areas of interest and target activities to fit them!

6. Classify the Genre

In one case your child is effectually 5 and can recognize the divergence between real and make-believe, I would suggest starting to assist your child understand various genres of books during your reading fourth dimension together. This might seem complicated, but it'southward really not. In that location are around 5 different genres of children's books that I would encourage you to betoken out to your piddling one. Of course you can use the term "type" rather than "genre" if that is easier to recollect.

Nonfiction (existent 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 made-upward story, but information technology could technically happen in real life because the characters and situations arebelievable)
Alphabet Books
Song Books

When children classify a volume into a certain genre, they have to get-go summarize the book in their head and recall details. And then they have to use that data to decide which type of genre that particular books fits into. Finally, your kid will exist recalling details from other books in the same genre, making connections between the 2. This simple activeness that might take v-ten seconds of your time afterward reading a book merely information technology certainly packs a punch of thought and processing in that immature brain!

As well, it'south important to annotation that not all books will fit into one of these genres, specially books that are considered "phonics readers." I would suggest that y'all do this exercise but with high-quality children'due south literature, not with books that are attempting to get your child to "audio-out" on their own. Virtually movie books plant in children's libraries will fit into ane of these genres.

Recall, our goal is for our children to learn to encompass what they're reading…otherwise reading volition honestly do them niggling good. When we encourage our children to think about and process the volume we've just read together, we are inadvertently modeling what we hope they'll one day do independently!

vii. Focus on Phonemic Sensation and Phonics

"Phonemes" are the smallest sounds in the English language (go here for a consummate list of phonemes). These sounds are made up of consonants, curt vowels, long vowels, and digraphs. "Phonemic Awareness" consists of learning those sounds and how to manipulate them within a word. Digraphs are unique sounds comprised of individual letters like /thursday/, /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 information technology! It made learning all of the tricky spellings so much fun! Pathways now has a homeschool version, which is astonishing!

9. Decoding

Decoding is often referred to as "sounding it out." Once your child knows the sounds each letter makes (which is taught in real, meaningful situations), she is gear up to begin putting words together. Decoding is a procedure 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 get more skilful at automatically identifying that word. Researchers say it tin take between ane-4 exposures of decoding earlier a word is transferred to long-term memory for automatic retrieval. Sometimes this task is boring, and tin can't exist brusque-changed, so it's important to find creative ways to make information technology fun. When I taught showtime grade, I used to buy little finger puppets that my students could use to bespeak to the letters as they were decoding. This was a huge striking and made this procedure and then much fun!

10. Apply a reading programme with explicit, systematic educational activity once he/she is in kindergarten and across

Most of the skills up to this signal are what I would consider "pre-reader" skills that we, as parents, tin can work on during our kid's primeval years to brand the process of learning to read much easier for our children. In one case your kid reaches schoolhouse-age, exist sure that you are using a plan rooted in the scientific discipline of reading, with explicit and systematic didactics in both phonemic awareness and phonics. If your child is headed to school, inquire to look over the curriculum to ensure it is strong in these areas specifically. Some children will naturally acquire the phonetic code more easily than others, as Nancy Young's Reading Ladder suggests, but ALL children benefit from early lawmaking-based education.

There is no amend 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 program has been involved in numerous research studies, showing statistically significant 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 instruction, equally identified by the National Reading Console, are incorporated: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Reading Comprehension. This is such an incredible resources for families and I tin't recommend it highly enough!

Learning To Read is a Journey

In summary, here are some practical suggestions you can implement every day based on the learning to read strategies shared with you in this mail service. Obviously, you lot can't implement all of these suggestions with children of all ages, then employ your judgement nigh what is the all-time manner to teach a child to read.

Read to your child every day!
Ask your child questions before, during, and after reading.
Let your child run across you reading.
Look for letters while out and well-nigh and in the environment around yous.
When teaching messages and letter sounds, incorporate every bit many senses equally possible.
Read a variety of books and make a game out of guessing the genre.
Have fun rhyming
Play these oral phonemic sensation games together (no materials required)
Encourage your kid to sound out short words (consonant, vowel, consonant).
Most of all, accept 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/