Teaching Reading to Children

Teaching reading to children is a science, but you don't have to be one to start reading to young children! One of the best ways of providing reading help for children is to make it fun.

We repeat activities that bring us pleasure. When we enjoy something, we are bound to try harder, do it more often and keep coming back to it even if we mess up a bit. That is basic human nature.

Teachers need learn how to make teaching reading to children a pleasurable activity. If you want your children reading and growing, then make it an enjoyable experience.

teaching reading to children

A national reading assessment of fourth-grade students found that reading for fun had a positive relationship to performance on the NAEP reading scores. 87% of students who reported reading for fun on their own time once a month or more performed at the proficient level, while students who never or hardly ever read for fun performed at the Basic level.


Strategies for Connecting
Children and Reading

  • Read aloud every day, and put your heart and soul into it. Click here for more on interactive read alouds

  • Provide them with opportunities to share what they are reading (have your students do a weekly Book Talk)

  • Let them read with each other, and let them choose who to read with

  • Keep your classroom library fresh and well-stocked with the best children's books you can find. Face them out so kids can see the covers

  • Ask them about their books - they want to share with you

  • Do not make them answer questions or write a report for everything they read - too many many people think this is teaching reading to children, and it's not!

  • Incorporate more teachable poetry for fluency and comprehension in your lessons

  • Provide special books to check out and take home for parents to read to their children

  • Let them earn a Read-In (an entire afternoon of reading, with crisps, soda, and pillows)

  • Encourage them to get involved in a series, like Geronimo Stilton.

  • Let them read what they like as often as you can: comic books, magazines, animal books, picture books, anything!

  • Present a Book Blessing every other week - go to step two under How I Do An Author Study

  • Invite parents in to talk about their favorite books and read to the class

My favorite tip to support teaching reading to children:

Turn on the closed captioning on the "education shows" we all like so much on a Friday afternoon. This way the students end up reading the words on the television as they are watching the show. Sneaky, but effective (credit to Jim Trelease from The Read-Aloud Handbook: Sixth Edition).

I even do this to my own three boys at home. I don't know if they necessarily love reading because of it, but their fluency and vocabulary have sure improved!

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