Supporting Reading at Home
As with anything, performance improves with practice. Encourage your child to read at home. When reading with your child, stop and ask questions to be sure your child comprehends what he/she is reading. Make learning a family affair! Create a culture of reading in your household by reading with your child, starting a home library, visiting your local library or bookstore on a regular basis, letting your child see you reading, and discussing books that each of you has read.
Reading with your child, no matter what the child’s age, is an important part of developing a good reader and building a lifelong love of reading and learning.
Reading nights – an excellent way to get together as a family. The local library has multiple copies of books, so you might try reading the same book as your child and let the discussions commence. Speak with your child about the book they are reading. Useful questions to ask – do you like your book? What’s happened so far? What do you think will happen next? Who is your favourite character? Why?
To help with home reading, we provide a reading toolkit which gives a number of techniques and strategies to best support readers, this is available here.
We know that finding books children want to read or authors that excite them, can be difficult; the choice is daunting and guidance rather thin on the ground.
With this in mind, below is a series of links to a wide variety of resources, websites, blogs and organisations which can help and inspire you and your children in the quest for that perfect book.