Top Tips for getting your child excited about Reading
This World Book Day reminds us that “reading for pleasure is the single biggest indicator of a child’s future success - more than family circumstances, their parents’ educational background or their income”.
Despite the importance of reading, many children (and adults!) can be reluctant to dive into a book. Children can feel the pressure of having to read, so showing them how much fun it can be will help them build a healthy appetite for reading and (hopefully) inspire a life-long love of books.
With this in mind, we’ve put together our tips for helping your child to get excited about reading:
Take the pressure off and make it easy for them - read to them when they’re in bed or lying in the garden, or plan family reading nights instead of/as well as movie nights.
Let them pick what they’d like to read - whether it’s a book or comic, for example. Allow them to follow their interests.
A great way to show children how much fun reading is, is to model a love of reading. You can do this by reading in front of them, talk about books at the dinner table or tell them about your favourite books from childhood.
Let your child set their own reading goals - you could help them create a reading bingo board, help them read a certain number of pages per day or week, or aim for a number of books in the summer holidays.
Make trips to the library or bookshops and let them choose a book.
Listening to audiobooks can help them pick up on the ‘hows’ of reading aloud - from voice changes, to different tones for emotions, pausing for punctuation etc).
Allow them to re-read their favourite books.
Link experiences and daily life to books - for example, go to a farm and bring a farm book (or read one leading up to the visit), or you could even go to places in the book they’re reading if that’s possible.
Questions to ask your child about their reading:
How did your reading make you feel?
What is one word you would use to describe the main character in the book?
Why did you choose your book?
Would you want to be friends with the main character?
Would you want to live in the setting of the book?
What is the villain’s motivation? What would you do if you were them?
Adapted from Edutopia