How to Encourage Your Child to Read in 8 Easy Steps

August 19, 2015

Experts worldwide agree that reading is a process involving a number of key skills – with mastery of phonics being just one. Here are easy steps to encourage your child to be an avid reader:

1) Engagement

Actively engaging your child to develop the love for reading and writing
If your child is actively engaged, he/she will enjoy the process of reading. This leads to the ability to read aloud with rich expression. If your child loves reading, he/she will also love writing. Writing is more than just penmanship – it is about thinking, feeling and connection with the written world.

2) Active understanding

Developing your child’s active understanding for effective learning
It is your child’s ability to actively understand and interact with words in all 4 areas of language: reading, writing, speaking and listening that supports the development of his/her analytical and Higher Order Thinking Skills.

3) Narrative intelligence for higher order thinking skills

Nurturing your child’s thinking and intelligence to make better sense of the world.
Narrative Intelligence is the ability to make sense of the world through sequential understanding and unique ways to ask the right questions and generate innovative answers. MindChamps Reading and Writing builds your child’s Narrative Intelligence via Immersive Reading and Theatrical Strategies to develop higher Order Thinking Skills and interaction with the written content and knowledge.

4) Phonemic Awareness

Teaching your child to hear sounds in context for future mastery of the language
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to ‘hear’ and manipulate the individual sounds of the language – Your child needs to hear these sounds in meaningful context, otherwise mastery will be harder in later years. Through meaningful reading activities, your child will become aware of words as individual entities. Your child will also develop a sense of sounds and words while being engaged in meaningful writing experiences.

5) Phonics

Helping your child to connect sounds to symbols with MindChamps’ unique ‘Say & Sing Phonics’ approach
Phonics is important for a balanced reading program but it is only one part. Here at MindChamps Reading & Writing, we have developed a hybrid approach to cater to different learning styles. Our unique ‘Say & Sing Phonics’ method helps your child master the connection between symbol and sounds (phonics) by experiencing their correlation in meaningful context.

6) Fluency

Familiarising your Child with the natural flow of the language
Fluency is the ability to understand – and use – the natural flow and rhythm of the language. Children, especially those whose mother tongue is not English, need to hear and model good readers. Through engaging experiences, your child will be able to reach fluency and attain comprehension. Those experiences include the use of rhyme, repetition and songs.

7) Vocabulary-building

Building your child’s vocabulary through MindChamps’ extensive reading library
Vocabulary – or word-mastery – is vital attribute of the life-long reader. With the books available in MindChamps’ extensive Read-along Library, your child will learn vocabulary through stories, rhymes and alliteration making the mastery of vocabulary easy and fun.

8) Structural Awareness

Cultivating your child’s understanding of how language is constructed
Structural Awareness is the ability of the brain to intuitively recognise how the words in a sentence ‘fit together’. Through sharing conversation, stories, poems, songs and ideas verbally, your child will progressively assimilate how language is constructed, leading to an appreciation off how to relate what he/she has read to prior knowledge.

Developed after years of extensive research and development, MindChamps Reading & Writing establishes the love for reading and writing in the early years by engaging both your child’s emotions and intellect. Providing your child with these 8 essential learning tools to develop their literacy skills will give them the edge in primary school and beyond!

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