4 top tips for teaching your child to read

Books teach us a lot about the world and can help your child to develop a love for learning. Reading is the fastest way that children can learn about SPAG and pick up new vocabulary, making it quite possibly the most important skill needed for school. A literacy tuition provider shares their top tips for teaching a child how to read.

1. Step in to help

While it’s important to get your child to read for themselves, stepping in when they’re struggling can help them to remember those words and reduce frustration. Try sounding the word out first and if not yet apparent, you can tell them the answer.

2. Confidence 

Getting your child to read can be quite the task. If your child expresses complete detest or is just not interested, it might be that they are lacking confidence. Finding the right books for their ability can help to make the activity seem less daunting. Getting them to pick out their own book can help with renewing their interest in reading too. 

3. Mastering the basics

To help your child with their confidence, make sure that they are fully confident with their phonetics before moving them on to reading. This will help them to enjoy reading and get the most out of it. To help improve their recognition of sounds, you can create a card sorting game that makes use of colourful pictures or use nursery rhymes.

4. Sounds and not letters

As adults, we no longer use the phonetic alphabet. Not unless we’re having to spell something out for a customer service bot. It can be easy to fall back into your own habits and use letters instead of sounds when teaching but it is important to avoid that in order to prevent confusion. Using sounds like ‘ah’, ‘buh’ and ‘cuh’ instead of the names of those particular sounds will help your child to blend sounds and find their answers easily.