Now that summer vacation is just around the corner, the time is here to talk a bit with your young students or children about the importance of summer reading activities and what they can do to improve their reading skills.
With your encouragement, you can help a child reach his/her reading potential. You might find that a few tips can motivate students to keep track of their reading progress.
Join a Summer Reading Skills Program
Encourage students to attend the library summer reading program. Such programs includes story aloud hour, and a summer reading project. Some libraries distribute a summer reading folder with a summer reading log.
Vocabulary Learning Helps with Reading Comprehension
Research shows that structured vocabulary teaching helps improve reading comprehension. (LaFlamme, 1997) Teachers can provide a list of vocabulary techniques and strategies on a worksheet which help target more independent vocabulary learning. Initially, students should read shorter texts with known vocabulary which focuses them on understanding the text. Such strategies include:
- Keep a running vocabulary list.
- Encourage educated guessing and always infer from the context.
- Offer vocabulary exercises at the end of the books.
- Students who are early readers can benefit from practice reading word families (words grouped according to sound clusters).
- Make a memory game using the words. Visual associations are incredibly important especially in the early stages of vocabulary learning.
- Help students break down the word according to prefixes and suffixes. They should have spent time practicing these skills builders during the school year.