Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in We really can’t put too much emphasis on the importance of reading. This is one of the first academic skills we teach to our children. Even before they enter pre-school or kindergarten, we read stories to them as a form of entertainment. This is a wonderful way to get your child involved with reading books early on. The more they hear and enjoy, the more likely they’ll catch onto reading themselves and enjoy sitting down with a good book. I’ve noticed that public schools now follow a system involving book reading at different levels. Books are labeled with letters of the alphabet, which reveals their level of difficulty. In all honesty, they never had anything like this when I was a child, but I sure do like it!
I routinely get excited when my second-grader comes home with a new letter on her reading books. I can still remember when she began with the letter A. This is the easiest level of reading you can find. Well, for a first-grader anyway. She has now made it all the way to letter O. her teacher tells me this is wonderful progress and that she’s currently ahead of most other students. Naturally I’m stoked about the whole thing. I can’t wait until she makes it all the way to Z. Just to be clear, there are a few things involved with this process of reading books for school. Number one; you must be able to pronounce the words clearly. Secondly; you should know what’s going on in the story. And finally, afterwards you should be able to answer questions about the characters and plot of the book. My daughter is commonly asked to explain certain aspects of the story while in class. Then the teacher makes her decision whether to move the student to the next letter/level or keep them at the same one for a while longer. So far I think this is a stellar program.
Pay attention to how much and how often your child reads for school. My daughter is assigned 15 minutes of reading per night. It’s up to her to remind herself! The teacher made this clear. Regardless, we do have her read to us each night to be certain she’s coming along well. Do the same with your child. Assist them with reading books on a routine basis and they will definitely perform better at school.