Sweet TnT Magazine Trinidad and Tobago Culture
Related Articles
Are you trying to figure out what are the best resources for parents to use at home to help your child read better? Well, this article answers your question and offers you the best resources to make your life easier.
The first thing you should know is that resources for parents to use at home must be different from the ones used at school. Even though your child may be 7 or 8 years old in Grade 2, you should know if your child is reading at a lower level even before the teacher tells you that something is wrong.
Many parents and clerks at bookstores select resources based on the age of the child without considering the child’s ability to read at that level. Therefore, resources for parents to use at home should be selected based on the reading level of the child and not age.
Remember, each child is different so select resources carefully in order to bring a child up to Grade level. Do a reading assessment at home to learn more about your child’s reading level. Then, choose what you need from the 6 resources for parents listed below.
6 Best resources for parents to help improve reading skills
1. Decodable books
Decodable books offer words that allow your child to practise their decoding skills. Story books with these words give your child the chance to sound out words and understand the material using their knowledge of letters, sounds, blends, syllables and meaning.
Decodable Stories is a series of books filled with numerous stories that use words specifically for decoding practice. Use these books to cover the 6 main steps of decoding. Make sure your child reads from left to right, sound out the first letter or blend properly, break each word into syllables, look at the whole word for familiar blends, sound out words in the mind and lastly, make sure your child asks if the word makes sense. Grab your copies of these books now.
Open Court Reading Core Decodable Individual Set Grade 2 (1 set of 4 books, 23 stories total) / Edition 1
by McGraw Hill
Each story supports instruction in new phonics elements and incorporates elements and high frequency words that have been previously taught.
US$474.75
2. Rhyming books
Rhyming books are fun resources for parents to use to improve a child’s spelling and reading skills. Books with similar sounding words are perfect for improving phonemic and phonological awareness and knowledge of spelling with digraphs, trigraphs and 4-letter graphemes.
Improve Spelling and Reading Skills is a series of 10 books that explore words with the same rimes that may or may not rhyme. An example is readers see the rime ‘ough’ several times in one story and hear the different sounds it makes in ‘though’, ‘through’, ‘tough’, ‘thought’, ‘cough’, ‘drought’ and ‘lough’. These words rhyme with ‘throw’, ‘true’, ‘stuff’, ‘court’, ‘off’, ‘doubt’ and ‘luck’.
Also, rhyming books also offer a lot of sight words because although the words ‘red’, ‘head’ and ‘said’ rhyme with each other, we can only decode ‘red’ but not ‘head’ and ‘said’ which are sight words. Collect all books in this series now.
Improve Spelling and Reading Skills (10 books)
These fun books of words with rimes that contain digraphs, trigraphs and 4-letter graphemes in many stories are useful for story time, spelling improvement classes, poetry sessions, improving phonological and phonemic awareness, and reading intervention programmes.
These spelling books come in both e-book and paperback formats for your pleasure. They make up a series of fun books that are having a spelling party on the inside.
The 2022 editions are AI Stories, EA Stories, EE Stories, EI Stories, EY Stories, IE Stories, OA Stories, OO Stories, OU Stories and OW Stories. They are all having their own fun with words.
US$29.90
3. Sight words books
Sight words books are very important at all Grade levels because these words cannot be decoded. They do not follow any rules of spelling so they have to be seen and learned in order to read them fluently.
Dinosaurs: A Sight Words Storybook is a colourful picture book that explores the first set of sight words using pictures. A child can get familiar with new words that cannot be sounded out by associating them with fun images. Purchase your copy here.
I Can Read My First Books: Dinosaurs – A Pre-Primer Sight Words Storybook: Pre-K – Kindergarten, Ages 3-5, Pre-Level 1
by Rob Lear
I Can Read My First Books: Dinosaurs
A My Pre Primer Sight Words Storybook
A colorful, fun and educational pre-primer sight words picture book that features all of the Dolch pre primer sight words in the story. Storybooks are the best method to teach sight words in a visual context. The Pre primer sight words are highlighted in red. Pause to explore each page so your little learner can read and identify the key sight words in the sentences.
Pre-primer Kindergarten Sight Words
a, and, away, big, blue, can, come, down, find, for, funny, go, help, here, I, in, is, it, jump, little, look, make, me, my, not, one, play, red, run, said, see, the, three, to, two, up, we, where, yellow, you.
Grade 1 Sight Words
all, are, ate, be, do, four, have, like, no, on, that, there, they, under, with.
US$10.95
4. High frequency words books
High frequency words books are also very important for all readers as they contain words that can be decoded and sight words. These words are used numerous times in all reading material so get your child familiar with them from early.
Short Stories Using High Frequency Words is a book that includes stories written by children whose assignment was to write stories using a given list of high frequency words. Parents can use this book as a guide to give children the same task to improve spelling and reading skills. Get this book now.
Short Stories Using High Frequency Words
by Hadamilka Vásquez Olivero de Ortega
In my job as substitute teacher and teacher of after-school, I help the children with their homework’s. One of the most difficult homeworks for first, second, and third graders is to write short stories using high-frequency words.
The teachers give them the words, and they must write the stories using those words. This book is a collection of some of these short stories. It will also a pleasure to read of benefit for the young students and teachers.
US$12.95
5. Flashcards
Flashcards for different reading levels are fun resources for parents to make learning interactive. You can allow your child to read random flashcards when spotted, pool words with similar rimes to see patterns, or play games that are sometimes included in the package.
Collins Easy Learning KS1 – High Frequency Words Flashcards introduces young learners to the first 100 high frequency words at school. Learning to spell and read words with these flashcards will build your child’s confidence quickly and make reading books easier. Buy it here.
Collins Easy Learning KS1 – High Frequency Words Flashcards
Introduce young learners to the first 100 high frequency words taught at school. These educational flashcards are a fun and easy way to help build confidence with reading at home.• help your child to practise high frequency words• build confidence with learning to read and spell• support your child’s learning at homeHigh frequency words are words that appear very often in written texts. They are a mixture of decodable words (words that can be sounded out) and tricky words (that have to be learned and recognised by sight). Includes:
· 100 high frequency words
· Each card contains the word and the word in a
simple phrase
· Ideas for fun games to play with the cards
· Helpful guidance for parents
6. Posters
Posters are effective resources for parents to make the home educational. Decorate your child’s bedroom walls with posters that display words with the same rimes, words that rhyme, word families, sight words, high frequency words, homophones, and synonyms and antonyms.
These colourful Sight Words Posters display numerous words for children to learn to spell and read quickly. By placing posters in a child’s face in the bedroom, hallway, bathroom and playroom, learning these words become inevitable.
Conclusion
These are the 6 best learning resources for parents to help improve a child’s reading skills. Make sure to do a reading assessment before making your selection. You want to ensure that you offer your child the appropriate material to stir interest in reading and sharpen skills where necessary.
________________________
You may also like:
