5 Techniques to Accelerate Your Child's Literacy

We live in an information society and literacy is the key to success in it. Being a good or excellent reader will be a huge advantage for your child over the coming years.

Kids who enjoy reading often read 2-3 books a week, the same as some children read in months. So the advantage they have is increasing all the time.

So here are 5 things that will make a huge difference to your child's reading development. We employ all of them in our Easyread System:

TIP 1 - Don't Use Books

This may seem a bit crazy, but teaching a child to read with a book is a mistake. It's like teaching a child to catch a ball by playing basketball.

A bright child will look at the text and use the easiest approach, which is to memorise some words and guess the others. That seems to work OK at first, but leads to more and more guessing as the books get more complicated.

Eventually you will see a collapse of confidence at around 6 or 7 years old.

TIP 2 - "Dimensionalise" the Phonemes

We use 43 phonemes (the little sounds within words) to create every word in English. You can find them at the beginning of any dictionary. Your child needs to know them, to make learning to read easier.

But they are tough to get a handle on. So the best thing is to create a visual image (with physical dimensions) for each one. That will make them much easier for your child to remember. For instance, we use the octopus that knocked a puss, the oak in a cloak, the owl with a scowl and the oon on the moon in Easyread for the sounds of the letter O. Those are much easier for your child to remember.

The majority of your child's memory capacity is visual.

TIP 3 - Play These Games

We are avoiding books. So what else can you do?

We find games like these work well:

Build-A-Word. Take 6 plastic letters including 2 vowels. Revise the main sound of each one. Then say a simple 3 letter word that your child can built with these letters, like bed, dog, fat or mop.

Select-A-Word. Write three very similar words, like hat, mat and map. Say one of them and ask your child to select which one it is.

Nonsense Words. Take some plastic letters again, revise their sounds and write a word that makes no sense, like hab, fud, tem, wom. Then see if your child can read it.

Easyread-I-Spy. This is just like the classic "I spy with my little eye..." game, except that you use the first sound of the word rather than the first letter.

TIP 4 - Less is More

Never do more than 15 minutes of reading practise at a go. Any more and your child's concentration level will begin to dip.

TIP 5 - Try Easyread TrainerText

TrainerText is a system we use to make ongoing reading practise much easier for the child. We float the visual images that we have created for each phoneme above the text, so that there is a clue to the sounds in each word. You can use the images you have created for Tip 2 to do the same.

The great thing with TrainerText is that your child can work through the text without getting stuck and needing help. That is marvellous for developing confidence and self-esteem.

Using this sort of approach, we see a new engagement with reading immediately and then a surge of confidence over the first 21 days. If you use these tips I am sure you will see the same thing.

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To find further information on Ways to Help Your Kids Learn To Read come to our website www.EasyreadSystem.com