Last time, I talked about using different techniques to influence your children to read more accurately instead of guessing the pronunciation or just simply rushing through the reading. I’m here again to introduce far more advanced techniques to further improve their reading skills.
(5) Have your children read the texts backwards.
Ask your children to read from the last word of a sentence or a storybook and read each word one at a time until they reach the beginning.
This is a neat little trick that people have used to correct their spelling and other minor errors in compositions. When we read in a normal fashion, our brains automatically think about the words we expect to come up next rather than checking whether if those words are misspelt or missing in the text.
Reading backwards, on the other hand, allows us to pay more attention to individual words and keeps our brain from making assumptions about what naturally comes next.
(6) Have your children judge their OWN reading speed and accuracy.
Now that you have built up all the influences, it’s time to let your children take the steering wheel and let them reflect on how fast and how accurate they are reading. Once they’ve done that, show him the difference between reading too fast and reading at a normal speed. Then have them reflect again. You can even record their reading before and after your demonstration, playing back the recordings for comparison.
Next time, I shall share with you the last few tips to help conclude this reading exercise. Be sure to watch this space for more helpful advice!