7 Ways to Improve Reading Skills

Help your child improve their reading skills by having them make connections with the material, build fluency, and understand meaning.

By Anne Schwartzberg

Ages

6-7

7 Ways to Improve Reading Skills

  • Ask Questions: Ask your kids questions about what they're reading. Questions promote critical thinking and lead to lively conversations about plot, character, and themes.
  • Make a "Mind Movie:" To help improve reading comprehension, ask your child to visualize what’s happening in the text and describe it as she would a movie. Making a “movie in your mind” helps children makes sense of and retain what they’ve read.
  • Create New Endings: Discussing alternative story outcomes is a fun way to help children improve reading by using their imagination and inference skills. After you and your child finish reading a book, have him create a different ending or the next story in a series.
  • Now Hear This: Read aloud to him everyday. Listening to reading helps kids use and understand language more easily, but you don’t have to be the full-time reader in the house. Big brothers and sisters often love to read to their siblings. Exciting alternatives to the standard read-aloud can be also found on the Web and in audio books. Just know your child benefits more by having the book in front of them as it is read.
  • Add Variety: Children improve reading by practicing with a wide variety of reading material, including magazines, newspapers, and websites. Increase reading opportunities by having reference books, poetry, and picture books all around the house.  
  •  Re-reading is Re-warding: Re-reading helps children further clarify the meaning behind the words. Have your child re-read each day for at least 15 minutes to improve and retain the information.
  • Follow the Leader: Like ducklings, your kids will live by your example. Inspire your kids by setting aside family reading time, becoming familiar with books that will interest your kids, taking them to visit the library, getting excited about new arrivals, and taking books wherever you go. Remember that there’s more to read than just books; celebrate reading everything with your child, including signs, shopping lists, advertisements, recipes, grocery items, and directions. There’s no such thing as too much reading!
Reading Comprehension
Developing Reading Skills
Literacy
Critical Thinking
Imagination
Age 7
Age 6
Reading
Creativity and Imagination
Independent Reading
Listening Comprehension
Fluency
Reading Comprehension
Early Reading
Guided Reading