How to Teach an Older Child to Read
You've heard the statistics. More than 75 percent of high school dropouts report that they have had difficulty with reading in school. Thirty-eight percent of fourth graders cannot read at grade level. If you know a child who has not yet learned to read, you may be wondering how to help.
Instructions
-
-
1
Gain a rapport with the child. An older child who cannot yet read will have a difficult time trusting someone who wants to teach him to read. Work on developing trust. Show him that you are interested in his opinions, in the everyday events happening in his life and in his reasons for wanting to read.
-
2
Discover which aspect of reading is tripping the student up. Some students have never sufficiently learned the various sounds of the letters, others have difficulty blending sounds and still others can decode but cannot comprehend. You could use letter-and-sound games to teach the first kind of child, introduce the second child to word families (e.g., pine, mine, line), and try chunking text with the third child (i.e., breaking the text down into bite-sized fragments and explaining each one in your own words).
-
-
3
Find out where the child's interests lie and find low-level reading materials that support that interest. A child who enjoys building model planes may enjoy looking at an instruction manual. Another child may prefer reading a sports magazine or a book about cliques in school. Feel free to read the first few pages to the child to get her interested before asking her to continue.
-
4
Make at least some of the reading activities practical. Younger children will enjoy learning how to read purely because it's fun or because it makes them feel "big." Older children will need to see more direct results before taking pleasure from the small steps of reading. Using how-to manuals and actually completing a project with a child can provide these results. Reading a play and then acting it out for an audience is another way to accomplish this.
-
5
Encourage the child to write. A child who can write will enjoy reading back what he has written. In addition, struggling to write something can help the child identify with the authors of the texts he is reading.
-
6
Point out each small achievement and make sure that the child appreciates how far she has come. If she has sounded out a difficult word correctly or has read an entire paragraph without giving up for the first time, make it a cause for celebration. Reward any large milestone, such as finishing a book or completing a project, with a fun game or food. This will help the child equate success in reading with positive consequences.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Think up games and other activities you can do with the child that involve reading. Scavenger hunts and letter writing are two easy ways to make reading fun for struggling older readers.
Never compare the child's reading skills to those of others in his class. This will only demoralize the child.
