How to Nurture a Growing Reader

Reading doesn’t just happen. It is a skill that must be nurtured from a child’s earliest years. Once children know how to read, they still need gentle coaxing and support to reach their full potential as readers.

Here are a dozen tips for nurturing your growing readers:

1. Read with your children at least once every day.

2. Make sure they have plenty to read. Take them to the library regularly, and keep books and other reading materials in their reach.

3. Notice what interests each child, then help find books about those things.

4. Respect your children’s choices. There’s nothing wrong with series fiction if that’s what keeps a young reader turning the pages.

5. Praise your children’s efforts and newly acquired skills.

6. Help your children build a personal library. Children’s books, new or used, make great gifts and appropriate rewards for reading. Designate a bookcase, shelf or box where your children can keep their books.

7. Check up on your children’s progress. Listen to them read aloud, read what they write and ask teachers how they’re doing in school.

8. Go places and do things with your children to build their background knowledge and vocabulary, and to give them a basis for understanding what they read.

9. Tell stories. It’s a fun way to teach values, pass on family history and build your children’s listening and thinking skills.

10. Be a reading role model. Let your children see you read, and share some interesting things with them that you have read about in books, newspapers or magazines.

11. Continue reading aloud to older children even after they have learned to read by themselves.

12. Encourage writing along with reading. Ask children to sign their artwork, add to your shopping list, take messages and make their own books and cards as gifts.

How to Use the Reading Checkups

How are your children developing as readers, and what can you do to help? Use RIF’s series of “Reading Checkups” to evaluate your children’s progress through six stages of reading development, from picture-pointing to independent reading. Each checkup describes the knowledge and skills that most children demonstrate at a given stage, and suggests how they can be nurtured.

Use the reading checkups the way a doctor uses a growth chart. Look for a steady pattern of growth with a few lulls and spurts. That’s a healthy sign that your child is “doing well” in reading.

Age or grade ranges are listed for each checkup, but just as a guide. We recommend that even if your child is already in school, you begin with the Reading Checkup for Babies & Toddlers and work your way forward. That way you will better appreciate the steady growth your child has already made toward becoming an independent reader.

Parents play a key role in their children’s reading development at every stage. As you mark your child’s progress, don’t forget to check up on what you can be doing to actively promote your child’s interest and skills.

Notice where most of your checkmarks fall. If your answers are mostly A’s, your child may still be making the transition from an earlier stage. If the answers are mostly B’s, your child is in the middle of this stage. If you checked mostly C’s, then your child is probably stepping up to the next level.

If you have any concerns about your child’s reading progress, talk to your child’s teacher or pediatrician.