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What is vocabulary?

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What is Phonemic Awareness?

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What is fluency?

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What is phonics?

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What is comprehension?

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Words of the day are a great way to promote new vocabulary words into your child's language "diet." Each day come up with a new word that you and your family attempt to use more frequently than you would on a day that didn't have a new vocabulary word. For example, if our word of the day was ball, we could define it, look at a picture of it, discuss it, and throughout the day point out any balls that we see in our environment. Send your child to school and encourage them to take a mental snapshot of each ball they see or to even rope your teacher in and have her take a picture or write it down for your child. This will get your child excited about vocabulary but will also encourage the use of new words. You may even want to use the vocabulary words that the child is learning at school already. Talk with your teachers to see what words are appropriate for your child to be learning at their specific skillset.

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Audio books on the way to school are a great way to work with your child on their fluency skills. It also provides them with an example of how to say a certain passage with expression. You can stop the book and ask your child, "how could you say this passage if you were mad, happy, or sad?" This activity is very flexible in skill level. You can demonstrate to your child how to change a passage to have a different meaning with your expression. For example, "the fox jumps over the hill!" can be said, scared, angry, or happy and have a different meaning each time. This is a great way for your child to have fluency modeled to them.

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Clap your words! Clap the syllables in words with your child. This can be done with a vast variety of words. You can do one syllable, two, three, up to as many as your child can comprehend. This is a very flexible activity as far as skill level goes and it is a great way to help your child identify the parts that a word is made up from.

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Recalling events is a great way to encourage comprehension in a child's learning. While in the car on the way to school play iSpy a connection. This is a game where you find something you are driving past and you say, " iSpy a connection! I remember I did this once when I was small. I kicked a ball around with some friends and we were on a team. I played Soccer! I see a soccer field." This is a great way to not only build those foundational skills with your child but also their comprehension skills that will allow them to recall on past events. This can be done with a child who has an exceptionality as well. It may need to be adjusted to fit the needs of your child. If language is hard for them to comprehend or express, using less words and more memorable experiences!

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While at home play the "I'm thinking" game. You think of letter in your head but you don't say it aloud. You say, "It sounds like Ball, Bean, Boing, Bounce and it makes the Buh sound" and allow your child to guess what letter you are thinking of. Give them a turn if they want one! This will promote your child's phonic skills by showing them the relationship between different letters and sounds. Whether your child has exceptionalities or not they will be sure to have fun and learn the relationships between letters and sounds!

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Resources for Parents | Tips & Information | Reading Partners

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At Reading Partners we know the learning doesn't begin and end in the classroom. Research shows that family involvement is the number one predictor of…

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Find some fun resources to support reading at home.

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As a special education teacher who teaches struggling readers with different disabilities, I'm often crafting mental lists of things I wish parents knew about their dyslexic children. Most important, I am eager for the parents of my students to understand that their children can and will learn to read, but it will take time. In the process, it is important to recognize their many strengths and accomplishments in spite of their weaknesses in decoding, spelling or handwriting. I want parents to know that preparing their children to deal with their disability can inspire confidence and enable them to look forward to a proud future in which they understand their disability as well as their strengths, self-advocating for their unique learning style.

Your child has many abilities and strengths. Maybe he can draw beautifully or has an amazing vocabulary. Maybe she has great listening skills or is an incredible athlete and team player. Be sure to notice those talents and tell them you see them excelling at something.

Often, I feel like my students' parents are so consumed by their kids' deficits in reading that they forget the things their children can do well. (Teachers are guilty of this, too.) If your child is artistic, use that talent at home as a way for your child to show understanding of a story you read aloud; draw a picture of the problem in the story or draw the main character. Just because your child has a word decoding weakness or messy handwriting or poor spelling doesn't mean you can't push him or her to achieve their best through a variety of venues. Allowing, and encouraging, your children to use their strengths will boost their confidence.

Celebrate every success with a good job or a high five. Every single one. Don't rely on report card grades to be the judge of your student's progress. Celebrate his or her reading a singular word correctly. Meet your child on his/her reading level and celebrate the successes at that level. If your child is a beginning or practically a non-reader, celebrate decoding the word "at" or using a picture to solve an unknown word. If your child is beginning to read more fluently, celebrate when they self-correct an error. In my daily small group reading class, I find myself giving praise constantly; it's because I want them to know that I notice their progress and the things they do well. If what we're reading is challenging, a smile and a "good job" can turn the whole lesson around. When I hear parents of my kids fussing at them about grades, I immediately find myself telling the parent about a small, but wonderful, success his/her child had reading or writing that school day. Harassing the students over report card grades isn't going to boost their confidence. Struggling readers need to know what they're doing right, not just their mistakes.

Be Honest with Yourself: Set Realistic Goals

A child who is struggling with reading will not get on grade level overnight. You need to be honest with yourself and your child about his or her progress while setting realistic goals.

An easy way to deal with the very, very long road (did I mention it's long?) to on-level reading is to set some very short-term concrete goals. As a teacher who uses a reading-assessment system and leveled books, my goal for students often is to move up a single reading level. At home, you might set a goal even to just practice reading every day. For example, you might suggest that your child read a certain number of leveled, independent books in a month (leveled books are books that your child can read independently or with only a little help), or you might set a goal of reading an interesting chapter book with your child. Make a countdown and cross out each book or chapter, respectively, until you reach your goal.

Remember: you're setting a goal that is achievable for you and your student that will positively affect his/her reading. What the goal really does is allow them to see that they're capable of reaching a goal, that they can be successful. You're giving them a chance to develop another strength.

Don't Let Poor Spelling Stop Your Child

If your child has a learning disability, there is a real possibility that he may really struggle with spelling and remembering even very basic word patterns. Here's the secret: That's okay. Teach your child to cope. Even if your children can't spell, they still have thoughts and creativity that they need to express. Don't let poor spelling make your child mute. Be sure to acknowledge their good ideas. Encourage them to use a dictionary, spell-check or text-prediction software. Have your children start their very own personal word dictionary as a tool to use when they write. Talk to your student's teacher. Look into what technology or other strategies there might be to help your child become more successful. There's a lot out there, but you won't find much if you're too busy pointing out that your kid can't spell.

Share Your Own Difficulties with Your Kids

Show your child that you still work at things that are hard for you, too. Admitting that you also have things you wrestle with can provide support and help your struggling reader understand that people have different strengths and weaknesses. An anecdote I often share with my frustrated readers is how I have always had terrible hand-to-eye coordination. And as an adult, I even maintain a joke with the people I interact regularly: "Do not throw anything to me or expect me to throw something to you." That's right; I am terrible at nearly every sport. However, I'll always give it a shot, and I try. When I'm on family vacation and it's time for some beach volleyball, you'll find me flailing beside the net or nose-diving into the sand. The moral: kids (and adults) should try things they're not great at, and it is helpful to see role models working on things that don't come easily to them.

When it comes to reading, bear in mind that when something is difficult and doesn't come easy, you generally just flat out don't want to do it! What makes struggling readers even more anxious about reading is the pressure they're getting both at school and at home to learn to read. (This is yet another reason why setting goals and celebrating every small success are so important.) So when they know that you are working on things that are hard for you, it helps take the pressure off them and makes their struggle less lonely.

Read Aloud to Your Child. It's Fun and Helpful

Your dyslexic reader can do more . . . if you help. Read to your child every single day. Hearing someone else read has the amazing possibility of sparking creativity and interest and also offers a chance to work on comprehension without the battle of decoding the text. A struggling reader may only be able to read short, short books with scant interest or depth, which offer little motivation to continue to work on reading. When you read aloud or have a program such as an iPad app that reads books aloud (call it old-fashioned, but a real human reading to children is better), your child has the opportunity to focus on the meaning of the words and content. They develop background knowledge and it allows them to use their imagination. Reading books to your child (or listening to audio books) allows him or her to get into books that his peers are reading and holds interest because they are age-appropriate. The additional bonus to reading with your child? You can offer explanations and further detail when needed.

Kids Feel Supported When They See Parents and Teachers Working Together to Help Them

Your child's education is not a private matter that excludes your child. It's the child's education! He or she needs to know what's going on; otherwise, it's a lost opportunity for learning self-advocacy. She's not going to learn anything when you tell her to go somewhere else while you and the teacher tell each other secrets about her. Do your kids a favor and tell them where they stand academically, what their talents are, what they need help with and the plan for helping them learn. Remember: you, the parents, will have a plan and a goal in mind! Also remember that your child's teacher will have a plan as well. Kids feel supported when they see parents and teachers working together to help them instead of being shuffled off into a corner. Read more in Education Editor Kyle Redford's piece, The Privacy Dilemma.

Small Steps Can Bring Big Improvements

The list of enrichment activities for boosting language and reading skills could go on and on, but there is one more important thing to remember: It doesn't need to be complicated. If your child is just beginning to read or is a very slow reader, go over the alphabet and letter sounds. Break apart short CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words (sit, hat, log and so on), and blend these sounds together (/j/ /o/ /b/; job). For more ideas, see Good Practices: Developing a Foundation for Reading.

If your child is a little more independent, sit with her, help her with hard words as she reads, maybe read aloud a chapter of a fun book to her every night before bed. Talk about what happened in the story, the characters and the setting; what's the problem in the story? Read a nonfiction book and talk about what you all learned from the text.

If your struggling child is older, let her be the teacher and read her books to siblings. Or, in our tech-obsessed culture, teach your child to grab a camera or recorder and record videos or audio notes of herself reading, then follow along with them to check for errors. For more ideas to share with your child, see Tips from Dyslexic Students for Dyslexic Students.

Most dyslexics will be slow readers for life, and that's okay. They have many more talents to offer, and their reading will improve in other ways with proper interventions. If your child is reading below a mid-second grade level, don't worry about fluency or speed. Focus on accuracy, or reading the words correctly, and don't pressure him to read faster. Instead, give him strategies to help him remember what he read, such as writing a sentence or two or drawing a picture of what happened on each page (or in each chapter). Your child is going to live with a learning disability as an adult. Teach him how to deal with it now, so he'll be better able to navigate the world later. And for inspiration for both parent and child, see our success stories.

If your child has been diagnosed with dyslexia, he or she will not outgrow it, but that doesn't mean your child won't learn how to read or be successful. If you teach your child how to cope and deal with his/her disability now, you're doing your child an incredible favor. Teach your children to advocate for themselves. Teach them how to ask for help. Teach them how to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Teach them about available resources and how to ensure they receive the accommodations they need for success. If you teach your children to do this at school, they're going to go into the world feeling confident and expecting success; they'll know how they fit in and what they need to do to keep up. And that's worth more than being able to read 180 words per minute.
Joshua Jenkins is a Literacy Specialist in Newton, Massachusetts. A Teach for America alum, Jenkins spent five years as a special education teacher in New Orleans.

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Ten Things to Help Your Struggling Reader - Yale Dyslexia

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Explore reading basics as well as the key role of background knowledge and motivation in becoming a lifelong reader and learner. Watch our PBS Launching Young Readers series and try our self-paced Reading 101 course to deepen your understanding.

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Activity 1: Every day have at least one read aloud with the children. This exposes them to a lot of vivid language that may not be found in books for beginning readers.

Differentiation: Read aloud may be complicated for some. Providing the child with his or her own visuals while you read and allow them to be in an area that feels calm to them.
Activity 2: Use rich language when having conversations with your child. Instead of saying, "this soup very hot" you could say, "this soup is extremely hot!"

Differentiation: You could say both, "this soup is very hot...This soup is extremely hot!" So that the student is hearing both and understanding what the word is that you are using and can be able to put it into context.

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Activity 1: Echo Game! In this activity you and your child will read a book together. You will explain to them that they will be copying what you say/ do. Read once sentence in the book at the correct pace and with the correct expressions. Allow your child to copy you to get the general idea of how to read the sentence.

Differentiation: Reading shorter passages and allowing multiple models before encouraging the child to echo. Possibly even picking a smaller book with less words so that they child feels successful.

Activity 2: Choral Reading! This is when you and your child read the same passage at the same time. You may need to slow your reading in order for your reader to keep up. Encourage your reader to copy your pace and expression!

Differentiation: This may be a complicated activity for your student as they may find that hearing your voice while they read, confusing. This activity could be turned into the echo activity should this happen.

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Take part in literacy experiences at home. Taking part can develop your child's reading ability, comprehension, and language skills. It could also improve your child's interest in reading, attitude towards reading, and focus.

Engage in activities at home. This is important for your child's early literacy development. Engage in: joint reading, drawing, singing, storytelling, reciting, game playing, and rhyming. When joint reading, you and your child take turns reading parts of a book. When reading, ask her to connect to the story. Have her tell you more about what she is thinking. You can use her interests to choose books. Give positive feedback and ask open-ended questions during joint reading to boost her interest and critical thinking skills.

For young children, nursery rhymes are especially helpful for language and early literacy development. Play audiobooks or read aloud at home to increase the amount of language your child hears. Hang different kinds of print around your house. Label objects in your home. This can show the importance of language, reading, and writing. Help your child build background knowledge on a topic. Talk about everyday experiences, show your child pictures, and tell her stories.

If you use a different language at home, speak and read to your child in that language. This can help grow his vocabulary and make connections at school. It can also increase his curiosity and readiness to learn at school. Learning opportunities in a home language will help literacy learning in English.

For older children, play word games, talk about word meanings, and point out interesting or new words when reading together. Ask questions before, during, and after reading aloud. This can help your child focus attention on the ideas in the story. Before reading, look at the book cover and talk about what might happen in the story. During reading, ask what questions he has about the story. After reading, talk about what happened. Ask your child to sum it up and relate the story to what he already knows or has experienced.

For adolescents, engage in conversations, offer a literacy-rich environment, and be a strong model for reading. Talk about school, magazines, or current events. Ask them what they are reading and discuss the books. Have a lot of age-appropriate and grade-level reading material around your home. Model good literacy behavior by reading regularly yourself.

Technology can help families meet the literacy needs of their children. Serve as a "media mentor." Talk with your child about using technology in creative ways. These talks can boost language development, build background knowledge, and help your child develop useful skills. Be an educated consumer of information on the internet. Review the abilities of the developers. Check the quality, usefulness, and content of the information being shared.

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Suggested Citation

Reade, A. (2017). Supporting your child's literacy development at home. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Special Education Programs, National Center on Improving Literacy. Retrieved from http://improvingliteracy.org

References

Dunst, C., Valentine, A., Raab, M., and Hamby, D. (2013). Relationship between child participation in everyday activities and early literacy and language development. CELL Reviews, 6(1), Center for Early Literacy Learning, Morganton, NC: Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute.

Guernsey, L., Levine, M., Chiong, C., and Severns, M. (2012). Pioneering literacy in the digital wild west: Empowering parents and educators. Washington, DC: Campaign for Grade-Level Reading.

National Urban League. (2008). Parent/Guardian engagement in adolescent literacy. New York: Author.

Related Resources

Abstract

Taking part in literacy experiences at home can develop your child's reading ability, comprehension, and language skills. Activities that you can engage in at home include: joint reading, drawing, singing, storytelling, reciting, game playing, and rhyming. You can tailor activities to your child's age and ability level, and can incorporate technology into your learning opportunities.

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Supporting Your Child's Literacy Development at Home

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Take part in literacy experiences at home. Taking part can develop your child's reading ability, comprehension, and language skills. It could also improve your child's interest in reading, attitude towards reading, and focus. Engage in activities at home. This is important for your child's early literacy development.

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Activity 1: This activity is called the Alphabet Ball. In this activity the adult calls out a letter and the first child to respond with a word that starts with that letter will get the ball passed to them. Then that child will call out a letter and pass the ball to the first person to call out a word that starts with that letter. Repeat this game until all letters are accounted for. This game is best done outside or in a gym where kiddo's can safely move around!

Differentiation: Offering your students the sound of the letter, " I am thinking of the letter B....Buh Buh Buh B" could help the child think clearer about what letter they should be attaching to the first letter of the word.

Activity 2: Mystery Bag! In this activity you will have a bag with three items that start with the same letter. You will give hints to each item until the children can guess what the common letter is amongst them. So for example, ball, bat, bear all have the letter B in common so the answer would be B.

Differentiation: You could provide your students with visuals in this game. Actually showing them what is in the bag and asking, "what do these words have in common?"

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Activity 1: Tongue twisters are a great way to build phonemic awareness in children! Pick a few of your favorites and be silly with them. Even encourage your child to create their own silly tongue twister.

Differentiation: How can this be differentiated for your kiddo's with exceptionalities? Great question! Creating tongue twisters that are simpler such as "sally sang songs" or "sally sold seashells." You could even break up the tongue twister into different sections until the child is more familiar with the activity.

Activity 2: Building word families together such as hat, cat, bat, fat, mat, is a great way to expose children to the various sounds their mouths can make. Picking 1 word a day over morning circle and coming up with a word family to go with it. Writing these down and posting them in the classroom for your child to see can help build strong literacy skills!

Differentiation: How can we differentiate this to meet the needs of children with exceptionalities? Providing options versus having the child come up with the words on their own could be a huge help and differentiation.

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Activity 1: A great way to increase comprehension in a child is to talk a walk together. While on the walk identify things you see. Encourage your child to do the same. This may trigger something in the child to have them recall certain information or events that they remember.

Differentiation: giving your student prompts such as, "I see a tree what do you see?" or "I have a tree in my backyard. Do you have a tree in your yard?" "where do you see trees?"

Activity 2:  This activity is called "I predict..." this is all about your child predicting what they think the book may be about based off of the title, cover page, and pictures. Join them in making predictions to show them that predictions can look differently for each person.

Differentiation: Providing cues such as, "I see there is a lady bug on this cover page. Do you think this book will be about lady bugs or bumble bees?" So that the child can focus on their prediction rather than identifying what they see on the page.

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Vocabulary: Activities for your kindergartener. Reading Rockets. (2022, September 28). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101-guide-parents/kindergarten/vocabulary-activities-your-kindergartner

Slyter, K. (2019, February 18). 14 phenomenal phonics activities for preschoolers. Rasmussen University. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/education/blog/phonics-activities-for-preschoolers/

Fluency: Activities for your kindergartener. Reading Rockets. (2022, September 28). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101-guide-parents/kindergarten/fluency-activities-your-kindergartner

Comprehension: Activities for your kindergartener. Reading Rockets. (2022, September 28). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101-guide-parents/kindergarten/comprehension-activities-your-kindergartner