Welcome to Riverside Elementary School's

Helping Young Children Get Ready To Become Readers:

Read aloud often to your child. It provides good bonding time, and also helps to build their listening and their comprehension skills long before they learn to read.

Follow their interests in selecting stories.

Introduce the book by reading the title, author, etc., and together take a good look at the cover. See if you can find a  connection with some aspect of the book to talk about before you read. “The picture shows a family camping. Remember when we went camping this summer?” 

Look at the pictures inside the book before reading to help them understand the story and to make predictions.

You may stop and talk about the story as you read it, and afterwards. Talk about their favorite parts. “This part was funny when...” to help them connect stories to how they make them feel, and to their own lives. 

Encourage your child to retell a favorite story to you,  to somebody they are comfortable with, or possibly to their stuffed animal, favorite doll or action figure.

Books with lots of rhymes, repetitive phrases, and

Picture books and wordless books are important. They can help a child learn about stories, book layouts, and plot details in the pictures. This type of book was previously thought of as only being for very young children, but now has been recognized to enrich older children who are readers as well.

Make books with your child for keepsakes, and some to give as gifts. They can tell you what to write. Use photos with your children in them to make books to send to relatives near and far.

Do children’s puzzles, card, and board games together. It will help develop their visual discrimination so they can notice things about text when they do start to read.  

On longer car rides, play books on tape or children’s songs. 

Purchase magnetic letters for your refrigerator. Put their name up. Help your preschooler learn how to form their name with you. Keep it fun. Jumble it and remake it. Magnetic letters can be great, especially for kindergarteners and first graders as they learn how words work. Stick to working on just one or possibly two words until they are well known before adding others.

Limit television viewing to a few selected shows a week. Also limit computer time and video game time.

Talk with your child. Involve them in conversations at mealtimes, other times, and encourage questions.

Take them to events, stores, museums, etc., to build their background knowledge from such experiences. It will help them later in both reading and writing.