Helping Your Child at Home

Children become readers when they see that reading is a useful, everyday tool, not just a school subject.

• Keep Books Accessible: Have a basket of books in the car, by their bed, and even in the kitchen.
• Model the Behavior: Let your child see you reading, whether it’s a novel, a cookbook, or a manual.
• Let your child listen and follow along. Audiobooks can provide access to age-appropriate content while allowing the child to continue developing knowledge and language without requiring all of the work to come from decoding.
• Use everyday print. Read recipes, menus, directions, game instructions, signs, schedules, labels, and shopping lists together. These give children meaningful reasons to read and write.

Reading to your child is the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading.

• Read aloud every day. Reading aloud gives children access to vocabulary, language, background knowledge, and stories that may be difficult for them to decode independently. Reading aloud is specifically recommended as an important way caregivers can support literacy.
• The “Picture Walk”: Before reading, flip through the pages. Ask, “What do you think is happening here?” to build prediction skills.
• Focus on Fluency: Use different voices for characters. This demonstrates how expression and pacing (prosody) change the meaning of a story.
• Interactive Reading: Don’t just read at them. Ask “Why” and “How” questions to build background knowledge, which is crucial for comprehension. Read more in this Blog

Following the Orton-Gillingham approach, engaging multiple modalities by seeing, hearing, saying, and doing, helps develop the brain pathways for reading.

• Connect sounds, letters, and movement. When your child writes a letter or spelling pattern, encourage them to say the corresponding sound at the same time. For example, as they write m, they say /m/. This helps connect what they see, hear, say, and do.
• Build and say: Use letter tiles to build a word while your child says each sound as the letters are placed.
• Sand or Salt Trays: Let them trace letters or words in a thin layer of sand or salt.
• Sound Scavenger Hunts: Ask them to find three things in the room that start with the “sh” sound or the “b” sound.

When your child hits a word they don’t know, avoid the urge to say “look at the picture” or “guess.” Instead:

• Tap it Out: Have them tap their fingers for each individual sound (phoneme) they hear in the word.
• Look for “Chunks”: Help them find smaller words or patterns they recognize within the bigger word (e.g., “ing” or “at”).
• Use Visual Aids: Use resources like b/d reversal posters or blending mats to help them navigate common stumbling blocks.
• Encourage rereading: After decoding a word, have the child read it again in the sentence. This helps connect accurate decoding with meaning and fluency.

Phonological awareness, the ability to hear and manipulate sounds, can be practiced anywhere!  Riding in the car is a perfect time to play with words and sounds.

• Syllable Clapping: Clap out the parts of their favorite foods (e.g., “ba-na-na” = 3 claps, “ba-con” = 2 claps).

• Segment the Word: Say a word and have your child say each sound they hear.  “Tell me the sounds in fish.” → /f/ /ĭ/ /sh/ …..“What are the sounds in stop?” → /s/ /t/ /ŏ/ /p/

• Blend the Sounds: Stretch out the sounds and have your child blend them into a word.  “What word is /m/ /ă/ /p/?” → map …..“What word is /sh/ /ĭ/ /p/?” → ship
• Sound Swapping: “What happens to the word top if we change the /t/ to a /p/?” (Pop!)

More Resources

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