Apr 10
26
Reading and Your Child
Your child is a learner with a distinctive learning style.
Language is the foundation for many kinds of learning.
Language and reading are soul mates. When united they enable your child to create fantasies, dream, inform and be informed by others and most importantly learn about himself or herself.
How humans acquire language is still a mystery but it is known for sure that children acquire language through imitating the language of parents, caregivers and people around them.
Children who do not acquire the ability to speak in their early years are at a serious disadvantage. The time between birth and five years hold our greatest learning potential particularly for language. Vocabulary, grammar and the overall structure of language are absorbed at a great rate during these years.
It is believed by many developmental scientists that half of our ultimate intelligence is developed by the time we are four years old. The average understood vocabulary of a four year old is 1500 words.
Loving parents and caregivers who speak to the child in their care using complete meaningful sentences are developing a relationship that encompasses language and reading. This is the foundation for future learning.
Sitting a child in front of the television will not do this.
The child as a learner must be emotionally involved. They must make a conscious decision to learn new skills.
What the Gift of Reading Can Do
- Expand language skills. Many of the words used in books are not used in everyday life
- Allow the reader to learn about him or herself and others through reading about characters and their behaviour.
- Clarify thinking, stimulate dreaming, hopes and fantasies
- Present ideas and experiences not experienced in everyday living
- Allow reading of favourite stories and books and so experience a sense of comfort and respite from the world
- Keep the reader in contact with what is going on in the world
- Enable social contact by sharing books and ideas with others
Some of the Common Reading Myths (False Beliefs)
- It is always easy to learn to read
- Using the eye is involved more than the brain.
- Reading skills are all mastered separately
- Reading has nothing to do with real life
- Reading can only be taught at school by trained teachers
- A love of reading comes naturally
- Reading will be replaced by technology
- Understanding newspaper headlines is all that is needed
- Children will grow out of their reading problems
- Watching TV automatically improves reading skills
- Reading is boring
- There is no value in re-reading a book
- You only read if there is nothing better to do
- Reading is an isolated activity
- Reading begins and ends at school
- Reading is a waste of time
- Fluent readers always understand what they read
Learning to read is one of the most important skills a child needs to learn.
It takes a conscious commitment from parents to make reading a part of family life. Too many parents say they don’t have the time to read to their children.
They don’t realise or refuse to acknowledge their role in this most important aspect of parenting.
A website that gives plenty of ideas about reading is
http://www.readingrockets.org/
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