Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in working with struggling readers who require additional help in reading fundamentals and comprehension skills development.
Reading Together
Marilyn Jager Adams once wrote that "Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read." That's a powerful statement! Read with your kids every day, and watch them blossom.
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The Role of Fathers in Their Child's Literacy Development (Pre-K)
The Role of Fathers in Their Child's Literacy Development
Family Literacy Bags: A School-to-Home Project
The home is the child’s first classroom and parents are the first teachers. Parents who read to their children everyday and talk about what they are reading together promote a joy of reading and literacy achievement. How can teachers encourage reading at home and support the role of parents as educators? One way is through the use of Family Literacy Bags — a theme-based collection of books and related interactive activities that kids bring home from school to share with their family.
Make Reading Part of Your Preschooler’s Everyday Life
Do you enjoy reading? Do you look at the newspaper? Read magazines? Go to the library? Chances are, if you do any of these activities, your preschool child is on his way to becoming a reader.
Bedtime stories aren't just for tiny tots: older children enjoy them too. Here are some tips for dads.
The U.K.'s National Literacy Trust offers ideas that schools and nonprofit organizations can implement to get fathers involved in their children's reading.
Finding and Sharing Great Kids' Books
Reading With Your Grandchildren
Reading with your grandchild is one of the most important activities you can do together. This article will give you some tips as to how to make the most of this special time.
Reader's Theater: Giving Students a Reason to Read Aloud
The reader's theater strategy blends students' desire to perform with their need for oral reading practice. Reader's Theater offers an entertaining and engaging means of improving fluency and enhancing comprehension.
Using Think-Alouds to Improve Reading Comprehension
Students need to think while they are reading. By using modeling, coached practice, and reflection, you can teach your students strategies to help them think while they read and build their comprehension.
Suggestions for Sharing Stories
This article from the National PTA features ideas on how to help your school age child improve their reading skills and tips on how to develop pre-reading skills in younger children.
Helping Your Child Become a Good Reader
Parents want the best for their children. Reading can open a window on the world, bringing chances to learn, enjoy and create. Even though schools teach reading and writing, home is the first and best place for your child's love of reading to grow.
Reading to young children promotes language acquisition and correlates with literacy development and, later on, with achievement in reading comprehension and overall success in school.
The statistics are consistent: Young male readers lag behind their female counterparts in literacy skills. This article looks at the social, psychological, and developmental reasons why, and suggests solutions — including the need for more men to become role models for reading.
Print Awareness During Read Alouds
The following is a sample format for what you can do before, during, and after a read aloud activity to help kids develop print awareness.
Tips for Encouraging Kids to Read
We asked the parents and teachers who frequent our web site for their ideas about how to encourage kids, especially those who aren't excited about books, to do more reading. Thanks to all you tip-sters out there, we received tons of advice, which we've summarized in the seven tips below.
Print Awareness: An Introduction
Children with print awareness can begin to understand that written language is related to oral language. Children who lack print awareness are unlikely to become successful readers. Indeed, children's performance on print awareness tasks is a very reliable predictor of their future reading achievement.
How Can I Improve My Child's Reading?
This advice for parents details what they can do to help preschoolers become readers, and help school-age children improve their reading skills.
Looking for new ways to motivate students to read? This teacher borrowed ideas from bookstore cafes to create a comfortable atmosphere for reading in her classroom.
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Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that offers research-based and best-practice information on teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle. It is an educational service of public television station WETA in Washington, D.C.
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