Beyond the ABCs: 12 easy ways to improve your child's literacy
Maggie Cary, a national board certified teacher has been an educator for more than 17 years. She is certified in secondary education and holds a master’s degree in early childhood education.
Over the years she has mentored countless teachers and advised hundreds of parents. Cary has taught children from preschool through high school. She also offers classroom advice on website Classroom Talk.
She is the mother of two young adults and lives and teaches in Florida.
A good education is essential for your child’s academic success. There are millions of ways in which you can help your child’s literacy development, but here are 12 things to do with your kindergarten or first-grade child.
1. Go to the library often and let your child pick the books that interest him and read together for at least 30 minutes a day.
2. Do a “picture walk” before you read a book. Go through the pictures page by page and talk about what is probably happening in the story. Use the illustrations in a book to help decode the text. Discuss your child’s predictions as you follow up by reading together.
3. Talk about the beginning, middle and ends of books you read as well as the characters and setting.
4. Ask questions about books that you read aloud to see if your child comprehends. Discuss and explain.
5. Read lots of nursery rhymes (to help develop phonemic awareness) and predictable stories.
6. Encourage your child to retell favorite stories to you using puppets or dolls.
7. Help your child learn to identify letters and their sounds.
8. Make flash cards of easy basic “sight words” (the, go, like, can, we, went, etc.) and look for them in books.
9. Make a game of reading environmental print (fast food restaurant names, grocery stores, food labels, gas station names, street signs, etc.).
10. Help your child label pictures with words that you sound out together.
11. Write grocery lists together.
12. Help your child make mini-story booklets. Start by using three pieces of paper, one page each for the beginning, the middle and the end.
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