Helping Your Child Become a Reader – 2024 Edition

Helping Your Child Become a Reader – 2024 Edition PDFs can be downloaded as a full version, or as individual sections.

Parent Booklet - full download

Individual questions and answers from the parent booklet can be downloaded and printed from the links below.

1. How can I encourage my child to like reading?
2. What kinds of books should my child be reading?
3. Sometimes my child brings home books to practice reading that they have already memorized! What should I do?
4. Sometimes my child seems to spend more time looking at the pictures than reading. Is this a problem?
5. Children’s teachers often talk about phonics instruction. What is phonics and what does it have to do with reading and spelling development?
6. Why is my child sometimes reluctant to sound out unknown words. What should I do when this happens?
7. What should I do when my child makes a mistake while reading?
8. Sometimes my child reads a word correctly on one page but can’t figure it out on the very next page. Why does this happen? (And what should I do?)
9. Is it OK for my child to skip over words they do not know?
10. On some days my child seems to have more difficulty reading than other days. Should I worry about this?
11. Sometimes my child seems to have trouble reading a whole sentence without going back and re-reading parts of it. Is this a problem?
12. Sometimes, when my child is reading, he gets annoyed if I tell him a word he doesn't know. Why?
13. How much time should my child spend reading?
14. What should I do if/when my child tries to avoid reading?
15. What kinds of things should I read to my child?
16. What can I do to help my child understand what is read – both when we are reading together and when my child reads independently?
17. Should I engage my child in writing at home? If so, how?
18. What should I do when my child spells some words incorrectly when writing?
19. Why does my child sometimes have trouble remembering how to accurately spell common words?
20. What can I do to help my child learn to spell more accurately?
21. When my child confuses letters like b and d and words like was and saw, does it mean they may be dyslexic?
22. What is dyslexia?
23. If caregivers are told that their children are having difficulty learning to read, what can they do to help?