Recently I have been working with my son on reading aloud, because his reading test at school shows his reading speed is below average. I am not too concerned about his reading speed, since I know he can read fast when he doesn’t have to read aloud. But I do want to work with him on reading aloud as a way to improve his self-expression and story telling skills.
To do a good job in reading aloud, kids have to learn to coordinate multiple tasks into a smooth process: “read by eyes”, “process information by brain”, and “read out aloud”. My son is good at each single task, but is not so good at putting all tasks together.
What I have been doing is to find short stories for us to read to each other. One book my son has enjoyed is the FREE Aesop for Children from Libray of Congress. They are short and all are good stories. We will each read 1 or 2 stories. Because they are short, I can find time to ask him read the words that he did not pronounce clearly again.
Another thing I just started doing is to listen to professional read children’s books together. One good resource I found is Caldecott Literature Series from New Hampshire Public Television. It has many prefessional read children’s books. While watching the videos, I asked my son to pay attention to the rhythm and intonation, and try to mimic how others reading the book. I try to point out the importance of pause – where and how long do you pause for a comma or a period.
Do you have to work with your child on reading aloud? What would you suggest to use for a school age child? Any tips you would like to share?
Game4Learning 
These are great ideas. My daughter is 6, and just on the brink of being semi-fluent with her aloud reading skills. She LOVES books, but still falls into the category of just wanting to look at pictures. Haha, which isn’t terrible. It’s still a bit of a chore to make her engage in the process of using her eyes, brain, and verbal language all at the same time. So glad I found your blog!
I see this post is older, but I being the mother of 3. I have to share a little story. 2 of my 3 kids, were awful readers. I tried everything. Even put them into some “special school” programs. For my kids, I had to pick smaller, big worded books, sometimes very much not in their age/grade level, but at least they were reading. If it wasn’t interesting they would not even try. So, I picked a few books and we started reading more and more, as I figure practice makes perfect. In a few weeks my girls were reading these books very well. Guess what, they had memorized the book. They weren’t so much reading or learning, they just had read the book too many times. So my advice, always change up the books. My girls are growing up fast and the one who struggled the most finishes a book or two every month. Good luck….~
Thanks for reading my most recent post, I am glad you visited my blog. I will follow yours now, as it looks like there is a lot to learn from your posts. If you find my blog interesting enough, you are warmly invited to follow me, too. All the best!
Thanks for checking out my post and for the “like.” I am a brand new blogger, so that means a lot!
I posted yesterday showing what I’m doing with my kids to keep reading interesting this month. There is a also simple printable. The child could do all of the activities while reading aloud, too, for extra {and fun} practice.
Thanks again! I am having fun getting to know others in this blogging community 🙂 Here is the link: http://theredbrickbungalow.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/the-first-of-octember-4/
Thank you for stopping by and liking my post yesterday; I appreciate it! I so empathize with you – one of my children wasn’t a great reader, but today (even though she still isn’t a great reader) is a terrific speaker. She has no problems whatsoever reading aloud. Even though your post is a little older, if I had advice to give, I’d say not to stress about it. Children develop at different speeds and some things come sooner than others. Just keep loving them and working with them – that makes all the difference. Practically though… change up reading material on occasion. Poetry, plays, comic books, magazines, cereal boxes… it all can be used toward the greater good! 😉 Bless you!
Thanks for the award!
I have nominated you for the “One Lovely Blog Award”. I understand that not everyone gets caught up with awards, nor do they stick to the all the ‘rules’. So if you are reading this and are one of the nominees, know this recognition is sincere.
here on the recommendation of Crafty lady. Congrats and hope to see more of your great works 🙂
My mom taught me to read when I was three – way before I ever started school – and I remember some of the methods she used.
She used flashcards with sight words to teach me the words, and she never sat down with me and tried to get me to learn each individual letter of the alphabet before doing so because she told me that words were just pictures with sounds put to them. That concept helped me tremendously.
When it came to reading out loud, she taught me by having me place an index card under the line of text I was reading and move it from word to word. She told me that it was important that I “say” the entire word in my head as I read it and that translated into a natural ability to read out loud.
I’ve noticed, over the years, that the people I know who struggle with reading out loud struggle because they do not take the time to “say” each individual word in their head as they read.
Ironically, the index card method that she taught me to use in order to enhance my understanding of the material, as well as my ability to read out loud, is the same trick used to teach people how to speed read.
Just read your post about reading aloud and I was reminded of the books on CD I used to order for my kids to keep them ‘entertained’ when I needed to grab a quick shower…or to keep them occupied during ‘quiet time’ this summer. I do think that how I read aloud to them matters….for instance when reading story books I use different ‘voices’ and now I am noticing that my 1st grader also uses different voices for different characters when he’s reading his AR books out loud to me. Good luck with the reading 🙂
What’s up it’s me, I am also visiting this web site on a regular basis, this web page is truly good and the viewers are truly sharing nice thoughts.
Reblogged this on lynnsblogs and commented:
If we were to have to stay at home with our children more, would anybody find that training their children & other children online would be a hard thing to do?