School is well underway for most homeschoolers—and there are lots of kinks to work out here and there. That is fine. Just solve one problem and then move on to another. Tackle the thing that is the most bothersome, then the next most bothersome.
Don’t do everything at once. And don’t expect perfection!
There are a lot of things that you can do to solve reading problems…here are my top several tips, but most of these tips are spread out in the blog posts, products, audios, and videos that I have listed below for a sort of “reading round up” for you. Hope this helps your reading struggles!
Be sure to contact me with questions—I can answer you via a blog post, a freebie product (!), video, or audio! I love to help homeschoolers!!
Top Tips for Teaching Your Child to Read
(1) Be sure your child is ready! The reading readiness will often break down at the point of “chunking”—putting the sounds together. I talk about this a lot in my reading workshops, but this workshop will especially help you determine readiness (as well as choose phonics programs, readers, and more).
Link: [Podcast] Summer Reading Help for Young Students
(2) Wait for readiness! There are many things you can do while waiting for your child to be ready to learn to read—including read alouds, audios, and more. The pre-reading time is not wasted time!
a. Prepare them: [Podcast] How Do I Prepare My Child to Learn to Read?
b. Reading aloud: [Article] Reading Aloud Together
c. Using audios: [Podcast] Using Audios With Children
d. Story time: [Podcast] Story Time Questions
(3) Use readers widely! Your child should be reading aloud to someone twice a day while he is learning to read. Use books that are just a little challenging for your child to read aloud to you. This is his instructional level, the level at which he is LEARNING. (For silent reading, have him use independent level readers (books he can read without any coaching from you).
a. Using the Bob books [Article]
b. My new vocabulary-controlled readers (not phonetically-controlled—listen to number one; these are controlled in the NUMBER of words they contain) [Sound It Out Readers]
(4) Move your child to chapter books by reading aloud together from SHORT chapter books, like this one: Read a Chapter, Mowgli!
(5) Be sure your child recognizes the letters and the typical sounds of each letter on sight—using songs, mnemonics, etc. He shouldn’t have to think too much when trying to recollect a sound
a. Teaching letter recognition with clue word cards:[Product Preview] Letters and Sounds ABC Cards
b. Teaching sounds with clue word cards and song: [Product Preview] ABC Sounds Song Packet
(6) Get advice from those who have taught several children to read (they have a wider experience to draw from). Here’s a recent video I did for reading difficulty helps.
