Reading Practice for Kids to Build Strong Skills

Start the Practice of Reading - Reading for Year 1 

Did you know, that your children will be growing a high range of phonetic learning and reading skills when they reach age 5 to 6? This is the time when they start their reading for year 1. During this time, their memory is strong enough to grasp vocabulary, pronunciation, and other reading skills. Thus, this time should be used advantageously - as parents, you can encourage reading skills among your children so that they master the skill of fluent reading with the correct pronunciation.

How Can Your Child Become a Master at Reading? 

Reading fluently is very important for your child, more importantly, it will be beneficial for them when they grow up. But how to make your children good at reading skills? This content is specially designed for the purpose of updating you and your child on how to master reading for year 1. 

Practice Reading

In this context, we consider the reading practice to start among your children from a specific month in a year. This is done for good time management and to have a proper account of their progress in reading skills. Reading for Year 1 is hence started from the month of January for your children. 

Reading for Year 1 - Learning Phonics and Comprehension Skills

The reading for year 1 gets started for your child when they start their journey with learning phonics, comprehension study, and acquiring high reading skills. At this stage, the prior focus is on developing their phonetic learning and comprehension skills. This will help them to read fluently with full confidence.

After 6 or 7 months, screen your child and test their knowledge of phonics. They are expected to show progress in their phonics and comprehension skills by this time. Good progress will get reflected if they are guided properly at home and school.

But, how to guide them well at home? Worry not, for that we have listed down the tips on how to guide your child so that they can have good reading, phonetic as well as comprehension skills. But before this let us check the list of ‘must do’ pointers.   

Be a Guiding Light for Your Child - ‘Must Do’ Pointers to Help Yourself

Mother Helping her Daughter to Read

These are some ‘must do’ pointers that are to be included in your guiding routine to help your child.

1. Encourage your child to use phonic skills to decode any words.

2. Mix the sounds and form words out of them.

3. Read out some tricky or exceptional words.

4. Readout the words which have different and unique endings.

5. Read good English books to your child. 

6. Read the same books twice or thrice so that your child can catch up on the pronunciation properly. 

7. Let them first listen to you while you read a simple story and then make them summarize the whole story in their own words. 

8. Read interesting tales - short stories, fables, folklore and fairytales, this will catch their interest and make them learn difficult words happily. 

9. Listen to the pronunciation of the difficult words and then make your child read along with you.

How Can You Help Your Child at Home?

Kids Reading at Home

There are numerous ways to help your child with reading. We present below the top ideas to help your child at home.

1. Listen to What Your Child Reads

Be considerate of the books which your child brings from school or any library. The books would have a mark on them as ‘reading books’ or ‘reading schemes’ or you can understand the context by just going through the pages. The reading books should consist of new words to read, and sensible stories, the writing should be clear and big enough to catch the attention of your child.

They can also re-read the same book, this will help them remember the words and grasp them easily the second time if they have missed the first time.

2. Read Good Books to Your Child

Reading to your child will be very beneficial to your child as well as pleasurable for you. Reading to them will make them enjoy your reading and at the same time help them build vital comprehension skills. Also, children who cannot read alone or have difficulty reading by themselves can follow your steps while you read. Thus, read as many good books as you can. 

3. Maintain Time-Table

Reading for ten minutes a day at least will go a long way in the focus of developing the reading skills of your child. You can make them read straight after finishing school, or while they are taking an evening break. Example of a sample timetable:

Reading Time:

• While showering and dressing up in the morning at 9:00 am - this time you can make them read some moral stories.

• While they end their study (as per their routine), suppose at 12 noon - this time kids can read some general knowledge books. 

• After they are up from a fresh nap at 4:30 - this time they can give a whole-hearted reading to a long reading book.  

• While they go to bed at 10 - here they can read their favourite bedtime story book or listen to an audio book or even listen to you reading (which is the best!)

4. Choose Good Books

Read good books to them. Choose books that excite your children. Books with colourful illustrations and pictures on them will attract your child to read them often. Some good reading books for the kids are listed down below:

• Ruskin Bond - Great Stories for Children.

• Phonics and Reading Activity Book.

• I Can Read Series for Grade I.

• Grandparents Bag of Stories.

5. Good Apps For Reading 

If you want to inhibit good habits in your kids, turn the negative habits into positive ones. One such way is installing good reading apps on your phone. You can install Kindle or Epic which will work great for your kid's reading skills. You can also give them access to kid’s podcasts so that they listen to the pronunciation of difficult words. Thus, the next time your kid is busy with the phone, worry not! For they must be engaged in fixing their reading skills!

6. Make the Words Sound if Stuck

If your child gets stuck on a difficult word then make them sound the phonics first, automatically they can pronounce the words nicely after that. 

This article was only a guide to help you and your child to acquire the correct steps in English Reading. You can confirm the progress of your child by tracking their progress report and also by encouraging them with good reading skills.