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Attention Parents: Tips for Boosting Literacy Over the Summer
Anne Hauth • Mar 21, 2024
Summer calendars tend to get very busy, despite many parents' best attempts to give their children plenty of unstructured free time. Quiet time to read might not earn a spot on the family calendar, but it should be highly prioritized nonetheless. Here are some tips to entice your kids to make reading part of their daily summer routine:
Make it fun!
- Ask a librarian or your child’s teacher for popular reading suggestions—not just the titles on the Summer Reading List, but a list of student favorites. Which books flew off the shelves this year?
- Find ways to connect your child’s interests to literacy-boosting activities. For example, a child who loves baseball can write a letter to a favorite player. An avid Minecraft player could be encouraged to read a book about the game. A super competitive kid might love the facts in the Guinness Book of World Records. A kid who loves arts and crafts could cut text out of magazines to create word collages or read a how-to book to learn something new.
Make screen time count
- Download Splat-O-Nym on an iPad to help your child build vocabulary skills. This independent word game includes over 8,000 questions teaching synonyms, antonyms, and words in context.
- Sign your child up for One Minute Reader. For just $24 ($8/month), your child can work independently to develop their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills all summer long! One Minute Reader provides high-interest, nonfiction content and other engaging features. It's a structured and motivating way to keep them reading and ensure they make meaningful strides in their abilities. Here is a flyer with more information about how One Minute Reader can help combat the Summer Slide in reading.
Involve friends and family
- Encourage your child to write letters to friends or family members. Not only does this help develop their writing skills, but it also helps them stay in touch with loved ones. Hopefully they get some letters back to practice their reading skills!
- Set aside time for a read aloud. Take turns with your child to help them develop reading stamina.
Learn more about reading instruction
- Learn about the five components of reading your child needs to develop in order to become a successful reader.
We at One Minute Reader believe reading is the most important activity children should be engaged in this summer. We hope you get a chance to enjoy some good reading time, too!
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Boost your middle schooler's reading skills with age-appropriate content, fluency practice, and more. Discover effective strategies and the One Minute Reader program for reading success!
After decades of helping struggling and reluctant readers, we know this for sure: The more kids read, the faster they'll improve. In One Minute Reader , the quickest path to reading competency is to successfully complete as many stories as possible while maintaining accuracy and comprehension. So how can you motivate kids to increase the number of stories they read? The One Minute Reader system is inherently motivating, but here are a couple more tips to get kids even more excited: Incentives! One Minute Reader gives kids points as they work through the steps for each story. Kids have fun accumulating these points--especially if they result in a reward! Many parents like to offer a small token (a treat, a sticker, a bit of screen time) when their child reaches a certain number of points. Small rewards could also be offered after the child passes a certain number of One Minute Reader stories or gets through a certain number of books. Be sure to verbally recognize your child's achievements, too. When you acknowledge your child's improvement in reading, it's often the best reward of all. Change the number of required Read Alongs and Read Alones based on performance. The One Minute Reader program requires kids to read along with audio recordings of the story and then to practice reading the story alone until able to read the story fluently. In the beginning, kids will often need to read along with the recording and practice the story more than once. However, if your child is making great progress and seems ready for a challenge, you can reduce the number of times they're required to read along and practice. (Parents can change these settings or each reader under the My Readers button in the reader management system.) This will allow them to progress through the stories more quickly. Conversely, kids who are not making the progress you'd expect may benefit from increasing the number of Read Alongs and Read Alones required until they become more fluent. Do additional research. One Minute Reader stories are about fascinating nonfiction topics. Kids working through the program will learn about everything from the invention of popsicles to meat-eating plants to barrier-breaking athletes. When your child seems particularly interested in a certain topic, it's easy to turn that interest into additional minutes of reading. Help them google more facts about the topic, or better yet, help them find a book about it at the library. The extra time they spend researching and reading about their favorite topic will translate into increased reading proficiency. Read together. Reading with your kids is one of the most effective ways to help them improve. When parents take the time to read with struggling or reluctant readers, the kids experience reading as enjoyable instead of frustrating. Teaching them words they may not know or asking them to read paragraphs aloud with you are great strategies to build their competence. One Minute Reader helps kids improve their reading skills independently. When parents combine this program with quality reading time together, kids tend to reach their reading goals quickly and with minimal frustration. So much of parenting involves trying to motivate kids to do things they need to do but may not want to do . Struggling and reluctant readers often stay stuck because they lack the desire to practice. Finding little ways to encourage them to read more and to read consistently is essential. We at One Minute Reader are here to help! Check out a free trial of our motivating program today, or get in touch with your questions.
Your struggling readers have likely asked themselves, or you, “Why is reading hard for me?” Sometimes, there is not a clear reason. With a little extra help, many struggling readers are simply able to crack the code and catch up. Other times, there is a clear reason: For millions of people, it’s dyslexia. Unfortunately, many individuals with dyslexia remain undiagnosed and have a more difficult time catching up to their peers. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in the country, affecting about 1 in 10 individuals. People with dyslexia have normal IQs, but differences in their brains make reading much harder for them. The dyslexic brain has a more difficult time understanding how letters and letter combinations represent sounds, and how letters are combined to form syllables and words. The symptoms of this learning disability include trouble with decoding, spelling, rhyming, and phonological awareness. If you have a child who may fit this criteria, visit the International Dyslexia Association page for self-assessment tools that provide information about diagnosing dyslexia in specific age groups. Humiliation about their learning struggles often causes students with dyslexia to retreat from class participation, lose confidence in their abilities, and underperform in school. Many go on to struggle in other key areas of their lives. To break this cycle, a greater understanding of dyslexia is essential. Teachers must be trained to identify dyslexia early on and provide appropriate intervention. When students with dyslexia receive the right kind of support, they are just as capable of performing well in school as their peers. Students who get additional support at home are more likely to reach their literacy goals more quickly. Sally Shaywitz, renowned dyslexia researcher and author of Overcoming Dyslexia , states that students with dyslexia typically need intensive, individualized instruction with feedback, guidance, and ongoing assessment in phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading fluency. Instructional programs should emphasize these core elements as well as building vocabulary and increasing comprehension. Reading researchers, including Shaywitz, recommend Read Naturally programs for providing this type of instruction. Read Naturally is the parent company of One Minute Reader. One Minute Reader was adapted from Read Naturally programs so that kids could use an effective reading tool independently at home. One Minute Reader and Read Naturally programs build phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension through high-interest nonfiction stories. The strategy used in these programs was designed to help students build confidence and motivation through self monitoring of progress. One Minute Reader and Read Naturally programs have helped countless students with dyslexia become competent readers. Dyslexia is a clear barrier to learning to read, but One Minute Reader can provide a clear pathway around this barrier. It's an ideal program to use at home with kids who need extra help becoming competent readers. Try it out for a free week! After that, it's only $8/month.
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