Helping your child to grow as a reader is one of the most important goals of second grade. At home, you can help to support this goal by reading with your child every night . Reading takes practice. The more your child reads, the better a reader he/she will become. Below are some reading strategies to use when helping your child to read at home:
Have your child look at the pictures that accompany the text. Picture clues can often help a child to figure out an unknown word.
Tell your child to look for "chunks" in a word. For example, it in sit, at in mat, or and and ing in standing.
Tell your child to skip an unknown word and read to the end of the sentence. Then, think about what word would make sense in the sentence. Often by reading the other words in context, they can then go back and figure out the unknown word.
If your child says the wrong word while reading, ask questions like: Does that make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right?
After reading, ask your child to retell the events of the story in their own words. Good readers read for meaning. Ask questions like: Where did the story take place? Who were the characters? What happened at the beginning? Middle? End of the story? What was that story mostly about?
Don't forget to also read aloud to your child. This allows your child to hear and enjoy higher level stories that they may not yet be able to read independently. Reading aloud also gives you the opportunity to model how a fluent reader uses expression to bring even more meaning to the words.
