How To Help Your Child Select The Right Book
Every child needs some help selecting the most appropriate and interesting book for their level. Here's some guidance!
Parents, teachers, carers and anybody who is involved in a child’s life whether through employment, voluntary work or through family relations has influential roles to play in helping that child learn to read. Parents and guardians however, probably play the most influential roles in ensuring that their child learns to read, maintains enthusiasm in the reading and engages significantly to attain excellence in their reading. Helping a child to choose a book to read sounds very simple but can actually be a challenging task. There are multiplicative factors that come into play and which should be considered in some details such as: your child’s age; their personality or the things that make them unique individuals or different and that can have impact on their choices of books and their general subject area of interests. Notwithstanding, choosing a book for a child or with a child should not produce angst and a sense of dread. In this short article, my aim is to introduce you to the ‘5 Finger Tool’ and show you a few skill necessary in building reading enthusiasm in your child. The ‘5 finger tool’ is an excellent way to introduce and select appropriate books for your child to read. It affords you and your child the opportunity to explore a less cumbersome way to estimate the level or difficulty of a book. The ‘5 finger tool’ is quick to use and easy to understand. You can always use it at home, in the library, in the classroom or book store and where ever there are books before you finally make a selection.
How to select books using the 5 Finger Tool:
Here are the steps that you and your child can use to select a book:
Open the book to any typical page that you and your child wish to read. Have your child begin reading.
As your child reads, count the number of words your child doesn’t know or has difficulty reading, by holding up your fingers.
Now use the number of fingers to help you decide if this is a good book for your child to read by themselves.
No Fingers up- This means that the book your child is reading may be too easy for them. ·
One Finger up – This means that even though the book may be easy to read, it is likely your child might find some new words to learn ·
Two Fingers up – This means that your child is reading a book just right for them. ·
Three Fingers up – This means that the book may be a bit difficult for your child. If your child likes a bit of fun and adventure they could try reading the book though in the end you might have to support them partly through. ·
Four Fingers up – This means that the book is difficult and you’ll need to read it with your child. ·
Five Fingers up – This means that the book is too difficult for your child and you’ll need to read it to them.
It is a wonderful experience for children to be able to read books with ease and still maintain an interest. In order to build continuous excellence in your child’s reading, you should continue to challenge him/her with books that they will not characteristically easily sail though. As a general rule, don’t nag your child to read a book they are clearly struggling with. This can dig at their confidence and the frustration may put them off books in the long run. It may be good to replace a ‘struggling book’ with a more tolerable one and reserve the ‘struggling’ one for another occasion.
What next ...
After finding out how to help your child select a book appropriate for their reading age, you might want to consider using the following skills in supporting your child’s reading. ·
Teach your child to sit comfortably and hold the book in the right way. This will prevent damage to the book and help your child turn the pages correctly and with ease as they read through. ·
Help your child read the author page and find out a little about the author, their style of writing, what other books they’ve authored and the blurb of the book they’re about to read. ·
Encourage your child to take a thorough look at the book, pictures etc and tell you what they think about the book and what it’ll probably be about. After reading the story, ask your child to give you a summary of the book and compare that with their initial thoughts. Talk about the contents of the book with your child. ·
During the reading, help your child recognise initial sounds in words particularly for challenging words and to employ the strategy of partitioning to sound out any such challenging or unfamiliar words.
Always ..
Do your best to ensure that your child finds a quiet place to read and also that you help make the reading experience enjoyable, fun and positive.
Maintain the flow of your child’s reading by not interrupting them immediately to correct a mispronounciation.
Don’t show signs of anxiety when your child is reading. Parents can display anxiety during a child’s reading for a number of reasons: child mispronouncing; not finishing a story; not showing good understanding; not progressing to higher level too quickly etc. An anxious parent can similarly produce an anxious child and make the reading experience altogether very frustrating. ·
Introduce a variety of books example: picture books, hard backs, comics etc and explore different sources of getting books: libraries, friends, school and your own stock at home. ·
Always be positive towards your child’s reading or their efforts at reading and try to encourage your child to read regularly.
Always remember that ‘little drops of water make a mighty ocean!’