Helpful Things to Say When Your Child is Stuck on a Word
Listening to your child read can be incredibly relaxing….or incredibly frustrating!
Sometimes parents say, “I’m just not cut out for this!” I get it. That’s how I felt about training kids for bedtime or using the potty. However, I still had to step up and do it. In the end, it was just for a phase of life. It passed. The children learned. End of story. Helping your child with reading is another passing phase of life.
Although it can be nerve-wracking to sit and listen to your child read, it is incredibly important. If your child goes to school each day, I guarantee the teacher is not listening to him or her one-on-one read all the time. Even if you have more than one child to balance, your child has a better chance of having one-on-one time with you than with a teacher responsible for 20 other students. For solid reading practice, the responsibility lies with you, the parent.
Let me say that again,
YOU, the parent, are responsible for ensuring your child gets practice reading aloud to someone.
It is important in the early grades of elementary school to continue to listen to your child read. You can find out if your child is guessing words, saying the right word, skipping words or lines of words, or even if your child understands what the book is about.
A parent that allows their child to read silently all the time without ever checking in does not know the reading errors that are occuring during the silent time. Silent reading is not a bad thing, but for the first half of elementary school, you need to be listening to your child read aloud to check their skill.
THINGS TO SAY: (in no particular order)
—Can you read that word/sentence again?
—Look at the first 3 letters. (sometimes I say 4…usually this gets the child through the first syllable of the word which is helpful)
—Look for any words inside the word
—Do you see a suffix at the end of the word (like -ed, -s, -es, -ing and so on)
—Think about it. Did what you read make sense?
—What sound does _______ make? (insert a combination of letters the child should know, such as “ow” or “or”, for example)
Finally, sometimes you just have to TELL THE CHILD THE WORD and not waste time.
My personal preference is to not tell the word right away. I like to give little clues/strategies (as mentioned above) first. However, a child is not likely to get the word if he has never even heard it, does not know what it means, and if it has a funky spelling. Save yourself time and tell the word and meaning. Remember that if there are too many difficult words per page, it’s a sign the book is too difficult for now. Choosing a book that isn’t too hard can make all the difference.
These strategies have helped me for YEARS in tutoring. They don’t require tons of training, but they help children to see smaller chunks of words.
For a more systematic approach, you might consider syllable division. If you’d like more information about how to teach that you can check out my course, NEXT STEP READING.
Remember, you are your child’s most influential teacher.