How To Improve Reading Skills

Reading is very important as it helps children gain more information about what happens in their everyday lives. It expands and improves their vocabulary.

This guide gives a few suggestions about what you, as a teacher or parent, can do to improve the reading skills of your learner/s or child, particularly at this early age.

The information below is a springboard to support creative teaching and effective learning. Take note of the following as you teach reading:

Learner’s background

Usually the environment from which learners come from is very important. Take note of it as it will influence the way they read. Let the knowledge they have be the basis upon which you start the reading lesson. Plan every reading lesson to their level.

Complexity of reading

Start by identifying skills that will need to be developed during the reading exercise. Find ways of how you will blend these skills together as the reading occurs. Always aim at getting meaning from whatever is read. Read everyday. 

General knowledge

Find out what they already know about the book- back, front, and note if they can turn the pages of a book correctly. Do they recognise letters of the alphabet; are they aware of the sounds of words (phonemes)?

Set a goal

Every reading session should have a goal. Know what you want to achieve at the end of a reading lesson. Try to balance the components of reading such as phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and a love of reading books and stories.

Reading aloud

Read aloud so that learners may learn how to read. Encourage them to speak as this will help them to learn a lot of skills they will need in reading. For example building vocabulary, sentence structure (syntax) and the purpose of communicating, singing rhymes, playing games and recognising phonemes. 

Develop intervention programmes

If a learner struggles to read, design intervention programmes to help them improve their reading. Assign them simple tasks that will make them read with fluency. You could design simple programmes that help them to learn more about phonemes, phonics, spelling, reading fluency and comprehension. Use as many comprehension strategies as possible. The strategies include:

• Monitoring comprehension
• Identifying where difficulty occurs
• Using pictures
• Answering questions during a reading exercise
• Generating questions
• Recognise story structure
• Summarising the story

Components of reading

Remember to balance all components of reading at all times in order to teach reading effectively. Components of reading are:

• Phonic
• Phonemic awareness
• Vocabulary
• Fluency
• Reading comprehension

Introduce questions

Help learners to participate in reading by asking them a variety of questions at intervals. Ask them:

Questions before reading:

Show them the cover of a book and ask them what they think the story is about. Read out the title and ask them what they know about the main words in the title.

Questions during reading:

During reading, stop at intervals and ask learners what they think is going to happen or why a character in the story behaves the way he/she does.

Guide learners to identify any emotions characters display. Ask them about their experiences regarding such emotion.

Ask them what they think is going to happen next.

Questions after reading:

At the end of the story, connect the predictions learners made before and during reading with what actually happens in the story.

Let learners retell the story in their own words.

All the time make learners understand they are reading for a purpose. We hope we answered your question of how to improve reading skills of your children or learners.