Literacy development is essential to future success. Improving literacy skills in your child can help them get ahead and can lead to success in math, science, history, career development, health and many other areas. For some students, literacy success might look different and may consist of more life-skills such as sign or number recognition. In other students, they may be preparing to enter college or the workforce and will need to read at an eighth grade level at least. Read on for some recommendations on improving literacy skills at all levels.

Life-skills literacy is defined as the ability to recognize and read important signs and numbers that will increase and promote safety or functional living. This includes reading a subway map, reading a picture recipe, recognizing bathroom signs, reading a grocery store price, recognizing important words and much more. Some resources for parents to use include:

For students who are just beginning their reading journey or are working on sound, letter or word recognition, reading with them is extremely beneficial. When reading with them, choose books that have 

 or words that can be easily decodable (sounded out). You can read part of the page and then point to a word or two for them to read. When they are able to read full sentences, you can read one page and they can read the next page.

When listening to your child read, periodically ask them these three questions:

Doing this will ensure that your child is not relying on you to tell them if they’ve made a mistake. By asking these questions when they have read the sentence correctly as well as when they have made a mistake will help them learn to self-correct. Self-correction is when a child is reading and realizes on their own that they’ve made a mistake, and they go back to reread the sentence in order to correct themselves.

Once your student is able to decode basic words (usually past a 3rd grade reading level) and has a firm grasp on their sight words, they start to transition from learning how to read to reading to learn information. At this point, comprehension of what they’re reading becomes the most important task. When this occurs, the best way to improve performance is to provide frequent and varied access to books. Having your own library at home is great, but it’s not necessary. The public library has an abundance of resources for you and your student to enjoy. Library cards are free and most libraries do not have a limit on the number of books you can check out at once. Additionally, larger libraries have online access where you can download ebooks right to your phone, tablet or kindle. This is a huge time saver, especially if you have an avid reader at home. Also remember, no one is too old to read with their family members! Kids of 

 ages enjoy being read aloud to and they also enjoy reading aloud to their family members. Encourage family reading nights where you all read together and then talk about what you’re reading.

 has a great comprehensive website of resources for parents!

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Improving Reading at Home