Easy things that parents can do to ensure success in beginning reading:

Encouraging your child to read: Learning to read is a long process. You can support your child's reading development by demonstrating that reading is an enjoyable experience, and a source of information. Daily reading will help your child to become a life-long reader.

Reading to your child: Children enjoy hearing stories. Reading familiar stories, and sharing new stories, provide many opportunities for your child to hear the language of books. Talking about stories will help develop and extend comprehension skills.

Reading with your child: When you read with your child, you provide support and encouragement for the child to read independently. Sharing the reading, and encouraging the child to chime in on favorite parts, allows the child to read with your support. Books with memorable language provide motivation for the child to become involved with the reading process.

Listening to your child read: Listening to your child read provides opportunities to develop fluency. Setting aside a specific reading time establishes a routine. Your encouragement and interest will support reading development.

Suggestions for reading at home: Whether you are reading to your child, sharing the reading, or listening to your child read, it is important to talk about the stories that you have shared together. Frequently your child may talk spontaneously about something interesting in a story. At other times, you may choose to begin a discussion about your responses to the story. Try these ideas:

Before reading, you may:

¦ Talk about the author and familiar stories written by the author

¦ Talk about the title and the cover illustration

¦ Encourage your child to make predictions about what the story will be about

During the reading:

¦ Encourage your child to look at some of the pictures and predict what will happen next

¦ Pause to respond to your child's ideas

After the reading:

¦ Compare this story with the other familiar stories

¦ Encourage your child to talk about events, characters, and ideas in the story and relate to personal experiences whenever possible

Helping to reinforce the first reading skills and concepts at home:

Book handling skills

Demonstrate how to hold the book the right way up; talk about the front and back of the book; turn the pages one at a time in sequence.

Directionality

As you read to your child, move your finger along the text to show how your eyes are following the print. Be sure to point out when you have to make a return sweep on two or more lines of print. Talk about the way the print is organised on the page if the lines start at different places. This ensures flexibility in looking across the whole page when reading.

Focusing on print

Beginning readers need to match what they say with the actual print so having them point to words in the initial stages of reading is good. If they invent by reading too many words or too little, simply ask them to go back and point to each word as they read them. Move their fingers if you have to in order to ensure they are seeing and saying exactly what is on the page.

Fast recognition of high frequency words (sometimes known as 'power words')

Flash cards are popular for learning fast recognition of high frequency words (am, are, at, the, I, go, in, me, said, I, it, for, we, went, here). Ask your child's teacher for these words and be sure to not only make a fun game out of the cards, but to point these words out in books.

It is more important that your child knows how to read and write these common words very quickly so more time can be spent on enjoying the meaning of text and the decoding of words that are more complex.

Encouraging phrased and fluent reading

Reading that is, 'phrased' involves reading words in groups and reading that is 'fluent' involves expressive and varied speed in reading. No matter how few words or lines are on a page, demonstrate reading that is smooth and uses expression. Reading that is phrased generates meaning as opposed to word-by-word reading.

If a character in a story is talking, make the reading sound like talking. Vary your voice tone. Children need to hear that reading should sound like we speak and that meaning is carried with phrased and fluent reading.

Next: 'Guided Reading – An Essential Component of Good First Teaching. What is this critical instructional strategy and how can you support your child with 'Guided Reading' at home?