I remember holding a storybook in my hands meant that I could escape into a different world; an alternate reality where birds could swim and people could fly. The imagination of the writers and the expression of emotions taught me how to be articulate.

However, I don’t see the same kind of enthusiasm for reading stories in today’s generation. What happened? Reading a book is not about “just” reading a book. It helps in igniting imagination, enhancing vocabulary, understand context, reading for pleasure or knowledge, broadening horizons and much more.

Reading is not a simple task. In fact, it is a highly strategic process during which the reader has to constantly decipher the meaning of the new words, actively use prior knowledge, classify information, make predictions, draw inferences, and ask questions.

Many teachers and parents find themselves run out of ways to encourage reading at home. At school, students are exposed to the only textbook reading material. At first, it might excite them, but it eventually wears off. Children need to read something other than textbooks. Nonetheless, excitement is not the only reason why children don’t find reading an exciting activity to do. Students face many problems while reading such as:

● Not enough motivation to read
● Pronunciation of new words
● Reading but not understanding what is written
● Density of information
● Not knowing the meaning of the new words

Strategies to help children learn better should be about centre around increasing their understanding of the text and ways to read effectively.

Strategies to Encourage Reading at Home:

Children prefer video games and hand-held gadgets above reading a book because a video game gives instant gratification while its hard to encourage reading at home, as reading a book requires them to be patient till they reach the end of the story. This creates hesitation for reading amongst children. It is important to have a few strategies under your belt as ideas to encourage reading at home.

1. Create excitement about stories during the day. Say things like, “I can’t wait to know what happened to Peter Pan.”, “I am looking forward to what happens to the beast.” or “I can’t stop thinking about what will happen next.” This way the child will either participate in a conversation about the story or at least feel an iota of excitement.

2. Imagine the story together. It is important that the child learns to imagine the setting of the text while reading it. Visualizing the setting helps the child enter the world created by the author. For example, when you read Alice in Wonderland, talk about how the room looks, what is the time of the day, the things that are kept in the room, etc. It is important that the child imagines the scene as described in the story. You can also ask your child to draw a scene from the story thus providing an extension to the story.

3. Infer the text to help the child with his reading skills. Inferring means to make an educated guess. For example, if the text says, “She slept through the day and didn’t eat at all.” The inference would be that either she is not keeping well or she is angry about something. Inferring helps children use their prior knowledge and to find out whether they understand the text or not. A child who reads a story makes inferences while reading to understand what they are reading.

4. Paraphrase the sentences as sometimes children find it easier to understand the same text using different words. Paraphrasing helps the readers generate microstructures of sentences by using synonyms to retell them. When children say what they have read in their own words, they are able to create meaning from what they read by linking the ideas in the sentence with what they already know.
For example,
Sentence: Lions can kill 15 animals per year along with other members of the pride.
Paraphrase: Lions kill animals as well as their pride members to survive.

5. Sight words should be put up on the wall so that students can passively look at the words every day. Sight words are words that keep reappearing in a text. For example, just, know, how, etc. This also improves their spelling via memory.

6. Read aloud as children learn a lot about intonation, word stress, and pronunciation by the way someone reads the text to them. Good teachers always dip or raise their voice while reading to bring more texture to their voice while reading. Eventually, the students will imitate. Also, students, who look at the text while an adult reads to them, are able to passively look at sentence structures and spellings.

7. Asking questions helps nudge the child into looking for clue or answers in the text. It also gives you instant feedback about how well the child understood the text. With each correct answer, your child’s confidence in his reading abilities with build stronger.

8. Take turns for picking up stories to read. Your child should be able to read what he likes and what you want him to read.

9. Try different reading text formats as more you expose your child to different formats, the more he will test his comprehension skills. The various reading format includes play, story, comic strip, news article, advertisement, etc.

10. Short to long text should be the way to go. If your child is not interested in reading a book, it might be because they feel like they have to read so many pages for a single story and since they don’t have a love for reading, it might sound like a cumbersome activity to them. Introduce your child to short texts or story first. Increase the length of the story eventually and gradually.

Reading comprehension helps in polishing our comprehension skills, spellings, guessing the meaning of the words, etc. Use the given strategies to encourage reading at home and see your child pick up a storybook to read without any nagging from your side.

Also Read: How to Make Kids Love Doing Home Chores

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