10 Best Practices for Teaching Reading

​General Strategies for Reading Comprehension

• Using Prior Knowledge/Previewing.
• Predicting.
• Identifying the Main Idea and Summarization.
• Questioning.
• Making Inferences.
• Visualizing.
• Story Maps.
• Retelling.

The following steps also help outline what you might do to improve and further develop your reading skills.

1. Set aside time to read each day.
2. Set reading goals.
3. Preview the texts you read.
4. Determine the purpose.
5. Apply key reading strategies.
6. Take notes while you read.
7. Apply what you read by summarizing.

1. Assess level. Knowing your students’ level of instruction is important for choosing materials.
2. Choose the correct level of maturity.
3. Choose interesting material.
4. Build background knowledge.
5. Expose different discourse patterns.
6. Work in groups.
7. Make connections.
8. Extended practice.

To thrive in both reading and spelling, here are 15 important rules to know.

• Vowels in syllables. Every syllable of every word must have at least one vowel sound.
• Short and long vowels.
• Silent e.
• Consonant blends and digraphs.
• Vowel digraphs.
• R-controlled vowels.
• The “schwa” sound.
• Soft c and hard c, and soft g and hard g.

A seven-year-olds’ receptive vocabulary is much larger than their expressive vocabulary. They can understand anywhere between 20,000 to 30,000 words, but can probably only speak 3,000 to 4,000 of them.

10 Teacher Tricks to Improve Your Child’s Reading Level

1. Decode mystery words: Read part of a book out loud to your child, omitting one “mystery word” that is frequently used (like “because” or “always”).
2. Personalize story time: Have your child narrate a brief personal story to you while you write it down.

Try these 7 effective ways to increase your child’s reading skills.

1. Establish a regular reading routine.
2. Encourage your child to read on a regular basis.
3. Help your reluctant reader to find books that they love.
4. Use reading examples outside of books.
5. Stay involved in your child’s reading education.
6. Never give up on your child.

Average Reading Speed by Age and Grade Level

7 Ways to Build a Better Reader for Grades 1-2

1. Make reading part of your child’s world. Read books with her and to her, aiming for a total of 30 minutes of book-sharing time each day.
2. Take turns. When he is ready to read to you, start by taking turns.
3. Ask deeper questions.
4. Be patient.
5. Help her when she needs it.
6. Read different-level books.
7. Praise her.