When it comes to developing reading comprehension from an early age, parents play an essential role. Apart from motivating your children to perform daily reading practices and exercise cohesion, you can take part by reading stories out loud. As you may suppose, most kids don’t focus on the print but rather on illustrations or the person that is reading.

This is where you can step in, switch their attention towards printed words, and introduce them to how an article or a book is organized. In this article, we will discuss a couple of efficient reading out loud practices and the advantages of these methods (for both sides).

The Advantages Of Reading Out Loud

According to numerous studies, reading to your children will not only motivate them to try doing it on their own but is also essential for demonstrating how letters, words, and phrases are pronounced correctly. 

Believe it or not, that nighttime story you read every day may be the key to your child acquiring the relevant skills and becoming successful at fluent reading and comprehension. As researchers suggest, through listening to a story, we connect printed words to information. 

This can be especially beneficial if your child has disturbances in reading. Hearing the correct pronunciation and understanding a more complex story can motivate them to invest more effort in their practices.

What To Focus On When Reading Out Loud?

As we have mentioned, children rarely focus on the text in the initial stages of learning to read. In most scenarios, their focus is on the attractive illustrations or the reader. 

This is where you can step in by taking short pauses during a reading session and bringing their attention to the meaning of specific phrases or words. This way, you will help them practice comprehension and cohesion by putting a couple of different known words or phrases in the same context. 

Furthermore, we find that an efficient strategy is to introduce them to how a book is organized. Tell them that a text is read from top to bottom and from left to right. Also, don’t forget to read page numbers or chapter titles.

Create An Interactive Experience With Word And Letter Recognition

Talking about the mutual benefits, you can start by making story reading an interactive experience. You can teach your child the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters (begin by comparing the size) and the name of those letters. 

Additionally, you should keep their focus by asking them to point out the words or phrases you just read. 

Concluding Thoughts

Reading is a complex process comprising numerous skills, including vocabulary, decoding, comprehension, and cohesion. Your role as a parent is to guide your child and introduce them to the basic reading concepts through some of the practices above.