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Doing What Works: Evidence-Based Reading

You are your children's first and best teacher. Other than helping them to grow up healthy and happy, the most important thing you can do is help them with reading skills. Reading is the foundation of all learning. In fact, President Bush has called reading the new civil right.

Even very young children benefit from being read to every day, from learning the alphabet, and from sounding out words. Ask them to tell you stories about the characters and pictures in their books. Show them that reading is interesting and fun, and help them to think about and experiment with words, sounds, and letters by showing them printed words and talking with them about what they read. Let your children see you reading a newspaper, a magazine, or a good book.

When children start school, the need to help them with reading doesn't go away. Reading together after school can help reinforce the lessons learned every day. Help them with their spelling words, and have them read you the stories they have written. Over the summer, children can forget many of the skills they learned during the last school year. Make it a habit next summer to take turns reading with your children every day.

As you read, discuss the relationship between words in a sentence, how descriptive language can draw a picture, and how the different parts of a story fit together. Ask your children questions about a book after they have read it. Give your children frequent opportunities to write about different situations and from different perspectives. Have them write a story, write a report on something that happened to them, give directions, and make an argument for a certain decision. Practice makes perfect.

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Last updated—December 17, 2004 (jer)