The Playbook: Create & Learn
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As the parent of a young child, you want to give them every advantage in life—particularly the ability to read quickly and accurately. Kids who read faster do better in school, have a better vocabulary and enjoy reading more than kids who read slowly. Reading quickly will help them better understand what they are reading and their own comprehension of the material. They'll also learn how to focus on what they’re reading rather than getting distracted by other things. Although some kids are naturally fast readers, others need a little help from their parents or teachers to speed up their reading process.
Reading quickly has a lot of benefits for children. We've all heard that reading slowly makes kids better readers. But there's more to it than that. Reading quickly gives kids an advantage when it comes to comprehension, comprehension skills, and even speed-reading abilities. Research shows that reading quickly improves comprehension skills and reading fluency. Kids who can read quickly are more likely to be able to understand what they're reading and how it relates to other things they already know about the world around them. This is especially important for students in elementary school and beyond—they need to understand what they're reading in order to be able to answer questions from their teachers or classmates, so if you can help them read faster then they'll be able to do that!
Here are 7 Tips to Help Your Child Become a Fast Reader—
If your child has a desire to read, then praise and encouragement can go a long way. If you’re trying to get your child interested in reading, consider offering rewards for each book they complete. That incentive may be all it takes to get them hooked on books. Be sure not to take shortcuts, though—read along with your child as they go through their book. The more engaged you are with their reading process, the more likely they’ll want to do it again! As kids learn how fun it is to read, they may even start asking you to read books along with them, and that will lead to faster reading speeds.
Reading with your child every day is a great way to spend quality time together and help them get ahead in school. This can be as simple as reading a book before bed or reading to your child from a textbook, if they’re already in school. By exposing children to new words, you’ll help them develop a larger vocabulary, which will make it easier for them to read later on. If you want to build strong reading habits now, remember that even one minute of reading counts! Reading might seem like an easy thing for adults but most kids don't naturally love reading as we do. Teaching kids how and why reading is important is an essential component of helping them become better readers.
There are many different reading comprehension strategies, but one of them is summarising. Summarising is a good strategy to teach your child and make them understand if they struggle with understanding passages or if they have trouble recalling what has been read. If you would like to give your child some practice summarizing, ask them to try writing a summary paragraph after they have read a passage on their own. At first, your child will probably just write down what he or she remembers from reading; that’s fine! This can become a springboard for discussing key points and details of what was read. Then, encourage your child to elaborate on his or her summary with his or her own commentary and feelings about what was read.
To help your child get to that point where he or she reads as fast as an adult, it’s a good idea to build up his or her vocabulary. One of the best ways to do that is by introducing stories with easy vocabulary. When you read to your child, keep track of unfamiliar words—and then work on building those words into his or her reading vocab. You can also introduce new words into everyday conversation and even find easy books with glossaries, so your child can learn more about what they just read.
Reading for comprehension is different from reading for knowledge. As a child, you didn’t read only for information and knowledge, you also read to understand what you were learning. One of your greatest tools as a young reader was note-taking: every time you encountered something new, you jotted it down on a scrap of paper so that you could revisit it later. We still do that as adults when we come across new ideas—we just do it in our heads instead of on paper. Practice keeping track of new words, phrases, and ideas by taking notes while reading.
Reading should be fun. Encourage your child to read books they like, and make sure they don’t feel pressured to finish a book if they don’t want to. To make it even more enjoyable, try doing it together! Taking turns reading with your child will both keep them interested in what you are reading and help them pick up on what makes a good story. As an added bonus, many parents use their children’s books for reference as well! And another tip: remember that often how well a child does at school may not have much to do with how hard they work or how smart they are—they might just be lacking some important fundamentals.
Many parents wonder what kinds of reading goals they should set for their children. The goal that makes sense for you depends on your child's age and interests, but it's always best to start out with short-term goals and gradually increase as your child progresses. It can also be helpful to set three different types of goals—long term, medium term, and short term—and to reward progress based on how close your child gets to each target.
It is said that the world is made up of two types of people; those who read fast and those who do not read at all. The former is able to capture all the information and details in a given piece of text, thereby making a more logical conclusion. Children who can read fast stand an advantage in terms of flexibility, creativity, and innovation thus ensuring improved job and life opportunities. Try to implement these tips from an early age.
