Parents play a vital role in the success of their child's academic performance. By being actively involved in their child's school life, parents can teach their children effective learning and study habits that will work for them throughout their lives.
Strong Childhood Reading Skills Leads to Academic Success
The United States Department of Education "My Child's Academic Success: Tools For Student Success" article addresses areas where a parent's positive involvement can make the difference between their child struggling or succeeding in school. Some of those areas include helping a child improve their reading skills, learn to become responsible and complete homework assignments absent undue stress.
Reading is one of the stronger skills that parents can help their children to acquire and succeed at. Strong reading skills are used by children and adults in school, at work and in the community. Without solid reading skills students can struggle in all other school subjects simply because they do not understand what is being illustrated, explained or asked of them. Should this spill over into adulthood, people can struggle to understand written company policies, how to create reports or lead team projects.
Inspiring Children to Read
At first children must be taught to understand words. Next children must be taught to comprehend what they read.
By reading to their children daily or at least several times a week, parents build a passion for reading in their children. Over time, this can inspire the child to read more frequently on their own which strengthens reading comprehension.
Scholastic, Sylvan, Reading Is Fundamental, American Reading and Pearson are leading educational providers that offer books to teachers, students and parents that are specifically designed to improve a child's reading comprehension. The books are available for grades pre-school through the senior year in high school.
Reading Resources for Parents and Their Children
Teach Children, Scholastic and Read to Achieve are organizations that offer books and other reading materials that help children improve their reading skills. With the advent of the Internet, parents can get copies of teaching guides and early reader stories that are fun for children to read from the comforts of their own home by clicking over to websites like Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Borders, Kmart, Walmart, Cushcity and Waldenbooks.
Local libraries and small to midsize local booksellers are other excellent sources parents can access to find books that help to improve their children's reading skills. It is not uncommon for libraries to hold book sales throughout the year and sale books for as little as five or ten titles for one dollar.
Steps to Improve a Child's Reading Comprehension
To start, pick stories with interesting plots and exciting characters in order to hold the child's interest. After reading three to four paragraphs of a story to their children, parents can pause and ask their children questions about the plot, characters and dialogue.
This can help parents to gauge their child's interest and comprehension of the story. If their child misunderstands the story, parents can correct their child's comprehension by providing examples of what is happening in the story before they continue reading from the book.
Allow older children to read one to four paragraphs from a book. Younger children can read smaller words throughout the story until they are ready to take on larger reading comprehension tasks. Encouraging children to draw pictures that illustrate what is happening in the story can also strengthen reading comprehension. When parents take the time to draw characters or scenes from the book with their children it further connects the parent and the child as well.
The more active parents are in their children's school life, the more of an impact they can have on their child's academic success. By picking interesting books with exciting characters, parents can increase their child's interest in reading. Local libraries, booksellers like Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Cushcity and Borders as well as educational companies like Pearson, Sylvan and Scholastic offer books that are designed to strengthen a child's reading comprehension skills.
Resources:
United States Department of Education. My Childs Academic Success. 15 November 2009.
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