Start the New Year with good reading habits to get children ‘reading fit.’ Encouraging your children to learn to read and inspiring them to love reading are the most important things you can do to help with their education. Follow Reading Chest’s New Year’s reading resolutions to get on the right track:
1. Read aloud to your children as often as possible. This could be a story at bedtime, or any other time of day. Don’t stop reading aloud just because children can read independently. Reading to children opens up a world of books that they might not choose to read themselves or be able to read themselves, and really helps to maintain struggling readers’ interest in books. Allow time to discuss what you are reading, to help develop critical thinking skills.
2. Listen to your children read every day. Just ten minutes a day will make a huge difference. Establish a good reading routine and let your children read good quality, inspiring books. They will lose interest with books that are too challenging and will not make progress if books are too easy.
3. Make time for reading yourself – and let your children see you. Research shows that the impact of parents’ reading, has a huge positive impact on children’s reading. If children never see their parents reading, they are much less likely to pick up a book themselves. It helps boys to have other male reading role models such as older brothers, dads and grandads reading.
