By Terri Douglas, Coordinator of Educational Services, Brehm School
Ask yourself these questions about your child:
- Are they pausing to sound out each word or three or more words in each sentence?
- Are they having trouble pronouncing the words correctly, or adding, deleting, and/or substituting words?
- Do you notice a lack of inflection and expression where needed?
- Are they not pausing at key points and punctuation?
- Do they not have a cadence to their reading?
Here are some strategies to help improve your child’s reading fluency:
- Like a bird I sing. Songs have a natural cadence and inflection to them. If your child has a favorite song, then print out the lyrics and read them together. Just like practicing a song, the lyrics may need to be read several times. Get the whole family involved for a grand production. Try writing your own lyrics as well. Poetry is also excellent for fluency.
- To be or not to be. Reading plays is another good way to practice fluency. Again, plays require practice, focus, and timing, and the key is to do this with the child. Get others involved.
- You’re cooking now! The reading of recipes allows for short passages with natural pauses that create emphasis and meaning. Always read the directions together first, and talk about the sequence and order. More importantly, it is fun and gives a purpose to reading. This is true of using all directions. So if you don’t like to cook, then build something. Try having the child dictate his or her directions on how to do something and then practice reading the directions back to you.
- Using a software program that can read to your child (optical character recognition) can be helpful. Most of these programs will highlight the sentence being read, and some may put the sentence in one color and the word in another color. This helps with focus and tracking. Most programs allow the number of words read per minute to be adjusted. Read the passage together a couple of times and then set the words where the student can read aloud with the program comfortably. Set goals or play games to increase the speed. For the parent, one goal might be to improve by 10 words per minute, while a goal for the child might be to improve by 1 word per minute. The idea is to keep moving up. One word per minute over the course of a week is a good goal. This approach will not help with inflection, but it is a fun way to address speed. Children respond well to computers.
- Neurological impress is when an adult sits next to the student and whispers the text into the child’s ear while the child reads from the same text. This can help with inflection and pauses that help provide meaning to the reading.
- Have fun! Read to your child, listen to books on CD, and listen to your child read. The more exposure and interaction with reading, the better reader your child will become. How your child feels about reading is hugely important.
Terri Douglas is the Coordinator of Educational Services at Brehm. She has worked in the education field for more than 20 years. A native of Nebraska, she received her Bachelor of Science degree from Hastings College in Elementary Education and Special Education. As a member of the Carbondale community, she earned a Master’s Degree in Education and is currently working on a second Master’s Degree in Administration from Southern Illinois University. Terri holds teaching certification as a Learning Behavior Specialist I, which qualifies her to teach K-12 students. Additionally, she makes presentations regularly at local, state, and national conferences and workshops. In the year 2000, The Wal-Mart Foundation recognized Terri as Teacher of the Year.
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