Helping Your Child With Reading and Writing At Home

TIPS TO IMPROVE READING, WRITING and ORAL LANGUAGE SKILLS

*Students should be reading a minimum of 1/2 hour each day.

*Students should read and be exposed to a variety of text types. These include; novels (fiction and non-fiction), short stories, poetry, comics, graphic novels, magazines, picture books, instruction manuals, newspaper articles, online articles, flyers, and posters just to name a few. Variety is key to improving language skills.

*Ask your child to read aloud to you. Should they have difficulty with a word, encourage them to sound it out. Let them try on their own first before giving them the correct pronunciation. Ask them to explain what more difficult words mean. They can give a synonym for the word, give the definition or tell you what they think the word means based on the context. If they are still unsure, have them look up the definition.

*Most importantly, students should be given the opportunity to discuss what they have read with someone. It is important that they share their ideas and interpretations and listen to what other people's opinions are about the text. Here are some meaningful questions to ask your child;
1) Tell me, in your own words what you read about (summarizing)
2) What do you think the main idea or lesson was?
3) Tell me about one of the characters in the text. What qualities do they have? Explain why you think they possess these qualities?
4) Did any part of the text remind you of another book you've read, a situation you or someone you know have experienced, or something that is going on in our local or global community?
5) How did the text make you feel? Why?
6) What part surprised you the most? Why?
7) What part would you change? Why?
8) What words/concepts were difficult for you to understand?
9) What was your favourite part? Why?
10) What is your favourite sentence, word, or picture and explain why you enjoyed it.

*Enourage your child to keep a journal. They can use this for creative writing, recording events of the day, or doing specific topics you give them. Always encourage them to re-read their entries and check for spelling and grammatical errors. They can also write the answers to some of the questions above in this journal. It is not necessary for you to correct every single mistake they make. It is more important that you focus on one aspect of their writing at a time. For example, spelling mistakes OR capital letters at the beginning of a sentence OR conjunctions.

*Should your child come home with no homework, these are activities that can be done in place of teacher-assigned work.

*Students would also benefit from choosing a newspaper article and reading and discussing it with the family a couple of times per week. This will not only help to develop better language skills, but give them a better sense of the world around them.

We hope this helps!!
Cheers,
The Grade 6, 7 & 8 Teachers