School
4 min Read
Make reading fun for your school-aged child
June 13, 2023
School
4 min Read
June 13, 2023
Strong literacy skills are among the most important barometers of a child’s future health and success. Nonetheless, “The literacy landscape is alarmingly poor in some parts of Canada, with 42 percent of Canadians [in those areas] being classified as low literacy,” says Dr. Alyson Shaw, a consulting pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. For years, the illiteracy rate in Canada has been stale. It’s estimated that more than one million Canadian kids have reading skills that fall below-grade.
What can you do if your child is having difficulty reading? With numbers this dire, parents can play an early and active role to guarantee that their children become good readers.
“Early literacy skills are based on early language exposure and early language skills,” says Dr. Shaw. “We generally consider that the first three years of school, children are learning to read, but the rest of their lives they are reading to learn. So if they don’t learn to read in those early years of school then they’re set up for a difficult time later on.”
Exposing your children to books and reading at very early ages, as well as continuing to encourage a variety of reading practices as they get older, is essential to establish your child’s love of reading. Dr. Shaw recommends “reading with your baby or child every day so that it becomes part of your routine.”
If your school-aged child is finding reading difficult or baffling, Dr. Shaw suggests “choosing books that the child will enjoy but that also won’t feel too babyish, even if it is at a lower reader level for them.” Comic books or non-fiction books are good options here.
Parents can also use dialogic reading, a practice that involves having conversations about the books you are reading with your child. “Reading with your child doesn’t mean that you have to start at the beginning of the book and read a story all the way through,” says Dr. Shaw. “It’s more about engaging your child and using the book as a tool for discussion.”
The child isn’t just a passive listener in this kind of interaction. With older kids, it helps to ask more sophisticated questions. “For example: Why do you think the author wrote this book? What type of message do you think they were trying to send?” says Dr. Shaw. This kind of attentive and tender parent-child moment paves the way for a rich, healthy, and highly literate future.
How to Incorporate Reading Into Everyday Life: Tips from pediatrican Alyson Shaw
Tips from Anthony Alfred: Interim President of ABC Life Literacy Canada
Originally published in ParentsCanada magazine, November 2013.