When children become good readers in the early grades, they are more likely to become better learners throughout their school years and beyond.

Learning to read is hard work for children. Fortunately, research is now available that suggests how to give each child a good start in reading.

YOU SHOULD SEE TEACHERS:

• Teaching the sounds of language. The teacher provides opportunities for children to practice with the sounds that make up words. Children learn to put sounds together to make words and to break words into their separate sounds.
• Teaching letters of the alphabet. Teachers help children recognize letter names and shapes.
• Helping children learn and use new words.
• Reading to children every day. Teachers read with expression and talk with children about what they are reading.

YOU CAN HELP BY:

• Practicing the sounds of language. 
• Read books with rhymes. Teach your child rhymes, short poems, and songs. Play simple word games: How many words can you make up that sound like the word “bat”?
• Helping your child take spoken words apart and put them together.
• Help your child separate the sounds in words. Listen for beginning and ending sounds, and put separate sounds together.
• Practicing the alphabet. Point out letters wherever you see them and read alphabet books.

YOU SHOULD SEE TEACHERS:

• Systematically teaching phonics–how sounds and letters are related.
• Giving children the opportunity to practice the letter-sound relationships they are learning. 
• Giving children the chance to practice sounds and letters by reading easy books that use words with the letter-sound relationships they are learning.
• Helping children write the letter-sound relationships they know by using them in words, sentences, messages, and their own stories.
• Showing children ways to think about and understand what they are reading. 
• Asking children questions to show them how to think about the meaning of what they read.

YOU CAN HELP BY:

• Pointing out the letter-sound relationships your child is learning on labels, boxes, newspapers, magazines and signs.
• Listening to your child read words and books from school. 
• Be patient and listen as your child practices. Let your child know you are proud of his reading.

YOU SHOULD SEE TEACHERS:

• Continuing to teach letter-sound relationships for children who need more practice. On average, children need about two years of instruction in letter-sound relationships to become good spellers as well as readers.
• Teaching the meaning of words, especially words that are important to understanding a book.
• Teaching ways to learn the meaning of new words. Teachers cannot possibly teach students the meaning of every new word they see or read. Children should be taught how to use dictionaries to learn word meanings, how to use known words and word parts to figure out other words, and how to get clues about a word from the rest of the sentence.
• Helping children understand what they are reading. Good readers think as they read and they know whether what they are reading is making sense. Teachers help children to check their understanding. When children are having difficulty, teachers show them ways to figure out the meaning of what they are reading.

YOU CAN HELP BY:

• Rereading familiar books. Children need practice in reading comfortably and with expression using books they know.
• Building reading accuracy. As your child is reading aloud, point out words he missed and help him read words correctly. If you stop to focus on a word, have your child reread the whole sentence to be sure he understands the meaning.
• Building reading comprehension. Talk with your child about what she is reading. Ask about new words. Talk about what happened in a story. Ask about the characters, places, and events that took place. Ask what new information she has learned from the book. Encourage her to read on her own.