Tips to help improve reading skills

Repeated Reading

Students are instructed to read aloud to a teacher, tutor or parent,  reread and repeat a short passage ( one paragraph of about 100-200 words) while they are given immediate corrective feedback, positive reinforcement and support. According to LaBerge and Samuel (1974), repeated reading is an effective strategy to use to help improve a student’s reading fluency. When a child has a large repertoire of words (commonly  used,  easily recognized without sounding them out), the mental stress of decoding and sounding words out are greatly reduces so that the child can allocate more of his / her mental resources to understanding what the passage is trying to convey.

Automaticity

Intentionally requiring your child to read aloud as you listen, give corrective feedback and support has these advantages (Herman, 1985, O’Shea, 1987 et al):

1. Increases the number of words read correctly per minute
2. Decreases word recognition errors
3. Improves reading comprehension

Encoding and Decoding Exercises

Don’t forget, some readers may be able to decode text while failing to understand what they read.

1. Ask the student to write the letters or words (Air Writing) they are learning in the air with their finger. Having the students write letters in the air is important because it helps them learn to see the letter shape in their imagination.
2. Ask the student to create images to match letters and sounds.
3. Practice decoding (a) identify the vowel, before reading the word. This is helpful for students who have difficulty with decoding; track student responses. Make an error of your own, ask student to correct the mistake.
4. Practice decoding and teach self-correction.
   1. Associate letters and sounds
   1. Ask the student to phonologically analyze letters blended into words that they already know and present new words with similar phonic sounds and blends
5. Attach images to Sight Words.
6. Ask the student to “capture” or collect words that they cannot instantly read. Write them on 3×5 index cards for practice.
7. Do symbol imagery exercises to help the student remember the words and increase their word-recognition speed.

Reading Interventions

1. Utilize incremental rehearsal (Burns & Kimosh, in press), a drill rehearsal technique (see MacQuarrie, Tucker, Burns , & Hartman, 2002) that is designed to teach unknown words by interspersing 90% known with 10% unknown words. This technique can be used to help students acquire, retain, and become fluent at reading words.
2. Consider adopting repeated reading which is a very effective oral reading strategy for building fluency with reading words in connected text (Rasinki & Hoffman, 2003).
3. Help students develop the habit of self-questioning during reading without the aid of the teacher in these ways:
   1. Use peer-assisted reading (for students identified with learning disabilities) so that the peer may serve as a model for the struggling reader by reading text aloud and demonstrating the use of comprehension strategies as well as providing corrective feedback (Morgan, Wilcox, & Eldredge, 2000).
   1. Consider using the Reading Recovery program for beginning readers (Clay, 1985, 1991).
   1. Consider using the Reciprocal Teaching programs for older elementary school students in grades fourth through sixth (Palincsar and Brown, 1984).

Reading Strategies to Consider at Home

1. Have your child read several books below his/her reading level to build confidence and increase word recognition.
2. As your child reads, ask the child to create mental images of what is happening in the story and share them with you. Memory of words, according to Flavell and Jenkins (1973) is greater when students were asked to process the words meaningfully.
3. Help your child acquire a joy of reading by:
   1. Buying or borrowing books on loan from the library on subjects of interest to your child.
   1. Creating a space where a collection of books are kept and read regularly.
   1. Using comic books, graphic novels, magazines and picture books to introduce sight words and to help your child learn new words by association.
   1. Role modeling regular reading schedules so that the habit of reading will be instilled.
   1. Read together with your child, letting your child see you point to difficult words, sound out letters / syllables and put the words together in an ordered structure to compose sentences.
   1. Share with your child your role models, heroes, celebrities and legends from history and read books about them together while asking your child to identify others of interest to him / her.
   1. Make a point to collect books, news articles about your child’s hobbies, celebrities of interest and read about their personal stories together.
4. Help your child comprehend what has been read, presented and heard by:
   1. Identifying preferred podcasts, Youtubers and watch episodes together using Closed Caption. Review and discuss the contents of the episode later.
   1. Associating and linking new words and concepts with word knowledge acquired in the past.
   1. Using the study of root words, prefixes and suffices to build word knowledge and improve comprehension.
5. Seek outside assistance, tutors, evidence based programs such as Hooked on Phonics, or online courses from Khan Academy, for example.
6. Attention, short term memory and concentration abilities play crucial roles in reading (P.Miller and Seier, 1994 and  (Reading for Meaning: Fostering Comprehension in the Middle Grades,” Edited by Barbara M. Taylor, et. al 2000). Help your child build mental stamina and attentional control by:
   1. Find the base line starting point by answering what grade or ability level can my child currently read?
      1.  Gradually increase word difficulty, number of words per sentence, number of sentences per paragraph
      1. Gradually increase the time spent reading with your child from ten minutes per day to twenty and so on.
      1. Incrementally increase the length of passages your child reads to you before summarizing its content from one sentence, to three sentences to five sentences and so on.
7. Motivation is equally important in reading skills and comprehension. Therefore parents should consider:
   1. Encouraging reading activities with a reward / incentive system.
   1. Praise your child profusely when the child reads with you and  partakes in independent reading activities

Book Clubs

Research demonstrates  that students, regardless of age and ability level can benefit from book club membership (Brock, 1997, Goatley, 1997 and others)

1. Start and lead an after school community book reading club where children your child’s age are the primary participants. The benefits in having your child participate in a book club are:
2. Students read every day
3. Students are encouraged to write their thoughts about the book read into a journal  (improves writing skills also).
   1. Research shows writing exercises could be effectively used as a tool to promote critical thinking about the passages read.
   1. During writing activities encourage students to gather information from other sources, synthesize the information and present their findings to club members
   1. Writing activities help students to understand literary texts (plot, theme and character development)
   1. Encourage students to explore the multiple techniques by which text can be critiqued (personal viewpoints, creatively, or critical)
4. Students obtain practice in speaking with others a about their opinions and listening to the viewpoints of others when participating in book club discussions with club members (community sharing)
   

Vocabulary Word Builders

Vocabulary and an extensive word bank are vital for the development of reading skills.  For instance, Lesley University says by third grade, students should acquire 3,000 per year. Other estimates suggest much higher word knowledge (10,000 to 15,000 words by third grade). The typical thirds grader is eight to nine years old.  On the high end, your child should learn 1,764 words per year; or roughly 5 new words per day. Good readers have a huge word bank of knowledge from which to draw (Anderson and Freebody, 1981).

1. Teach your child at least 5 new words per day. Increasing word knowledge is key to developing reading comprehension (Pearson and Johnson, 1978)
   1. Behave as though your child is learning a new language and post word labels, word magnets throughout the home to help your child learn new words.
   1. To improve retention, practice word usages with sentence refreshers, simple quizzes and games.

Reading Strategies at School

Current research published by the National Institutes of Health make the following suggestions for positive reading outcomes for middle and high school students struggling with reading:

1.    Provide explicit instruction in

1. word study strategies to decode words,

1. word meanings and strategies for deriving the meanings of unknown words, and

1. comprehension strategy instruction.

These findings hold specifically for students with reading difficulties (Edmonds et al., 2009) and learning disabilities (Scammacca et al., 2007) as well. Furthermore, recent reviews indicate that providing ample opportunities to practice and receive corrective feedback during instruction are associated with improved academic outcomes (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Shute, 2008).

Structured Reading Supports

The school should consider providing a tiered reading intervention.

1. The school should consider providing structured intensive reading program such as the Orton-Gillingham research-based program.
2. The school should consider utilizing a multi-sensory teaching system that uses sight, sound, movement, and touch to help the student connect language to words.

Basic Reading Skills

1. Incorporate the child’s interests into lesson and/or encourage him/her to read books relating to their interest, hobbies, favorite sport, toys, heroes, action figures, animals or video game/movie characters.
2. Prior to reading content area texts, activate the student’s prior knowledge about the subject.
3. Teach the student to read words by blending individual sounds.
4. Teach the student that words can be broken into syllables.
5. Make new words by changing individual letters of a base word.
6. Teach the student SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review) method of reading.
7. Build phonemic awareness skills (word chunks, digraphs, and blending) to make new words.
8. Use paired (alternating) reading strategies when reading aloud.

Use topics relatable (of considerable) interest to the student to motivate her to want to read.