Get Better at Reading: Read 10 minutes a day

According to National Literacy Trust, an organization created by the UK’s Department of Education, reading 10 minutes a day increases children’s happiness, wellbeing, and improves their reading and writing skills.

Here are some tips for reading with your child:

1. Choose shorter stories where they can read about 70% of the words.
   Anything more difficult will turn them off, and anything too easy will not reap the benefits of learning new words through reading.
   
   
2. Refrain from judging their ability to read ( I know, I know this is a hard one!).
   It is okay for kids to stumble when they read. Simply read those words that stumped them for them, and move along. Do not pause to comment on their inability to recognise the words (even if they keep stumbling on the same word).
   
   
3. Set a timer.
   When the timer goes off, you stop regardless of where you are at with the story. Don’t be tempted to finish a story, or try to increase the time just because the session is going well. This creates curiosity; you never know … someday they might decide to pick up the book on their own to finish reading the story.
   
   
4. Think of this “reading time” as drills rather than a leisure activity.
   Contrary to popular belief, when you are helping a child learn to read, the interest to the story isn’t as important. You are basically trying to get them to recognise as many words as possible, so reading widely, and frequently matters more than getting them interested in the story. Only when they have the confidence to read on their own then interests becomes a priority.
   
   
5. Keep at it!
   This is the hardest part. Life takes over, and I often find myself unable to read with my kids. But know that this won’t go on forever, once they become better readers, they will want you to leave them in peace to read. Except for Chinese reading … children takes a longer time to mature as a Chinese reader, mostly due to the difficulty of the language system. Check out this post for the difference between Chinese and English reading.
   

These tips work for both Chinese and English reading, except that to grow a Chinese reader, it takes way longer. What this 10 minute of reading a day “drills” does is to build children’s confidence towards reading. When they have someone read with them, they know that if they run into any questions, they can just ask, this assurance alone reduces their reading anxiety greatly enough that they will be more willing to read.

I hope you find success in getting your child to read. My eldest child was a non-reader at primary one. She could only write her name (in caps only) and couldn’t even read any of her assigned worksheets. I did not sign her up for any reading enrichment or phonics program (this one has a lot of issues on its own and I’ll discuss it in another blog). We began doing these reading drills for 5-10 minutes a day. It was too difficult for her to do 10 minutes in the beginning, so we did 5 minutes to start, then slowly increased to 10 minutes.

We changed things up with sometimes me reading all the narratives, and she only reads the dialogues (which are usually simpler and shorter). Sometimes I read one page, and she reads one. Sometimes we alternate paragraphs. It’s up to you! There’s no hard and fast rules on how you and your child choose to read during these ten minutes. Remember, you reading to her is also beneficial!

But ultimately, we want to get them to independently read on their own for 10 minutes a day.

XOXO
Chief Book Elf