Cuddling together with a book is one of the best things parents can do with their young children. Storytime helps in both a child's vocabulary and reading skills acquisition, an excellent foundation towards further academic performance. A lot of scientific evidence has shown that one-to-one shared reading is a great way to raise good readers on the long term. The use of picture books, in particular, allow the young learners to better understand stories, even if they don't know yet all the words encountered in the text.
How to read with your children? Here's a list of a few useful habits to teach them to read.
Read in an interactive way
By pointing out illustrations, giving word definitions and asking your child a lot of questions. This method, called dialogic reading, can significantly increase the number of new words a child can learn from reading.
Repeat vocabulary words
Research has shown that multiple exposures to words improve learning, not only because children memorize new words more easily, but also because they understand them better and retain them longer.
Repeat favorite stories
Reading the same story over and over again increases a child's ability to learn and remember words.
On the other hand, who reads with the child matters much less. Scientists have discovered that a child's word comprehension was not really influenced on whether a story was read by a familiar reader (a parent, a teacher) or by a person the child doesn't know (like a researcher, for example).
The child's age is not very important, either. In fact, it seems there is no correlation between a child's age and word comprehension.
Picture: Olivia reading (ChildUp.com)
