19/08/2025
One of the biggest indicators for success at school is your child’s reading ability and vocabulary development. You can play a large part in helping to make your child into an avid and capable reader. Here are some ideas that can help you to do just that:
• Take your child on trips to your local library and make this a fun and regular outing.
• Give reading time as a reward.
• Read together as often as possible (even ten minutes a day is a good start). You read one page, your child reads the next page and so on.
• Read aloud to your child so that they can hear how good reading is modelled and you can read them stories that are at a more advanced level than their reading ability, to ensure that they are being introduced to new vocabulary.
• Engage with the text by asking questions about the story-line and the characters, and making predictions about what might happen next.
• Make sure your child has access to fiction and non-fiction books.
• Play word games in your home such as Boggle, Taboo, Scrabble, 20 Questions
• Listen to your child read aloud every day; encourage them to sound out the word, think about what word would make sense and look at pictures in their book to give them clues as to what the word might be.
• If your child is making errors on every line of their reader, the book is more than likely too hard for them, and this will only frustrate them.
• Give books as gifts so that your children can see that you value books.
• Make a comfortable, inviting reading space in your home with some books at hand.
• Think about allowing your child to read for ten, twenty or thirty minutes in bed before going to sleep each night.
