Help Your Children Become Better Readers

Tuesday, March 1, 2005

Help Your Children BecomeBetter Readers (NAPSA)—With all the electronic forms of entertainment available today, children are increasingly turning to the television, Internet and computer and video games rather than picking up a book. Therefore, it is crucial that parents regularly create opportunities to read together with their children and encourage the practice they need. “Building strong reading skills is one of the most important things parents can do for their children,” says Richard E. Bavaria, Ph.D., vice president of education for Sylvan Learning Center. “Parents can foster an interest in reading by spending time reading with their children and demonstrating that they enjoy reading as well.” To help ensure that children are reading well and reading often, the experts at Sylvan offer the following advice: Make reading first. Mak- ing time for reading each day will help promote children’s reading growth. By emphasizing the habit of reading at home, parents communicate to their children that reading is a top priority. Let children explore. Encourage children to read anything—comics, movie reviews, even cereal boxes! Makeit easy to read. Make sure there are plenty of reading materials available for children in every room of the house. Makefrequent trips to the library so children always have books on hand. Use reading strategies. Use strategies to help children identify words they do not recognize. Ask questions such as whetherit looks Reading with your kids, as well as reading to them, can help fos- ter a lifelong love of books. like other words they know,if they can recognize another word in the longer word, or can they use the words aroundit to figure it out. Choose read-aloud books within their readinglevel. If children have trouble with more than five words on a page, the book may be above their independent readinglevel. To help encourage children in grades K-8 to read more often, for longer periods of time and with greater understanding, Sylvan Learning Center created Book Adventure, a free online interactive reading motivation program. Parents can help children log on at www.bookadventure.org, choose a book, take a short quiz and redeem points for prizes. For additional information on emphasizing the importance to children of reading at home, visit www.educate.com/tips or call 1-800-31-SUCCESS.

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