Fluency

I am looking for ways to improve my child's comprehension and speed reading skills. How do I go about this?

If you choose to work directly with your child, the following articles are full of suggestions and ideas for increasing reading comprehension skills:

• Reading Aloud to Build Comprehension
• Improving Reading Comprehension for Students
• Comprehension Instruction: What Works
• Tips for Encouraging Kids to Read
• Getting Your Child to Love Reading

You may also want to find a local tutor to work with your child. You can contact a tutor through a local university, church, library or in the yellow pages for your community. The LD OnLine Yellow Pages might also be helpful.

Lastly, school administrators and guidance counselors can help you locate services.

My second grader is having a hard time focusing on one word at a time when reading. What can I do to help her?

Beginning readers need lots of practice reading – it takes time, practice, time, and more practice! Work with your daughter's teacher to learn exactly at what level she is reading. Then, go to the library and load up on books written at that level AND below. Provide her with time each day to read, reread, and reread again those below reading level books. You'll want to build up her confidence and fluency with those books. Then, support her reading by reading WITH her the books at her instructional level. Prompt her to sound out words that can be sounded out (and just tell her the ones that can't or are too tricky). Praise her efforts and reread each book multiple times over the course of a week or two. Finally, get some terrific children's literature written ABOVE her reading level. Read those books to her to remind her WHY reading is so great. Model lots of good expression and let her hear what good, fluent reading sounds like.

Do everything you can to provide a fun climate for reading. If a book is too hard, put it away. Reinforce her efforts and continue to work closely with your school and teachers. If she continues to struggle, talk with them about additional testing and some one-on-one supervised tutoring.