Read newspapers and magazines.


I think MyPaper (WoBao) is quite good cos the articles are shorter and easy to read.
Magazines have colourful illustrations, children will not feel as though they are reading.

Kids magazines such as Young Generation, Young Scientist, ScienceSpy or National Geographic Kids are not bad.

How about \"Times 1000 words\" series?


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=518731944891183&set=a.322609147836798.67777.153353161429065&type=1&theater

I also expose my children to Dr Seuss.. I love the stories and illustrations too.

I will keep workbooks for future reference. As for craftwork, usually I will keep them for awhile before throwing them. Sometimes not very nice to let my girl know that I throw her stuff…

As I am new, I was going through the forum.. and I found this chat room with upcoming events.. Got one event is on workshop for literacy maybe useful for concerned parents here..


http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=63581

I think the mention of friend helps.. I try to make school fun for my girl by saying that she will be doing things with her friend. Then when she comes home, I will ask her about the activity with her friend. And she will usually tell me what happened and laugh about it. Try this, I think it helps!

jetsetter:

schen:

Any recommendation on teaching kids to comprehend? My 6 years old boy can read, but sometimes he will tell me he does not know what does it mean......

Most imported readers will hv Q&A at the back. Did u ask him qns pertaining to the story after reading with him?

Frankly, I dunno how to teach compre! But i find bedtime reading helps a lot. It sharpens DS listening compre skills...ie grasping the macro context and inferring the para semantics, not just taking the sentence at face value. DS will interrupt me and ask me what this or that means...then I'll elicit opinions from him regarding the content, etc.

Written compre-wise, I only bought assessment books from Popular and guided him to pen down the answers after reading. For instance, highlighting the key words found in the qns...then hunt for them in the passage. Those are straightfwd answers.

The slightly more diff compre qns are those that paraphrase/substitute the original sentence in the passage with another word or phrase. This one requires a lot of reading so that his vocab bank (comprising antonyms/synonyms) becomes richer.

The third kind requires contextualising, meaning answers can only be found in the whole para or passage, which requires the kid to digest the passage first. I dunno how else to teach this, but I find watching Ch 5 drama series or cartoons helps to some extent!! Mine watches 1h of cartoon daily after kindy. He is able to articulate why, what, who, when, how abt each episode. Rhis helps him see the larger scheme of things!

HIs kindy also requires them to read newspapers and present the gist of the news to the class. This helps a great deal too, but requires close parental guidance. I let DS watch CNA primetime news too, cos it's got subtitles which aid his compre subconsciously.

You can also ask him to retell the story to you in his own words. To see if he has understood the story line.

Start giving him simple picture books first.


Many parents underestimate the power of these picture books. They think that they are too simple. But the real intention of these books is to really help the child read.

The way to use these simple picture books is to use the pics to help them guess/locate the words.

E.g.: if the word is butterfly and the child can’t read, you can prompt them to look at picture… then when they give you the answer, you can ask them to locate the word "butterfly"… you can also ask the child how he/she know that the word he/she is pointing to is "butterfly"… And that’s how you can bring in the lesson on phonics too… –> "butterfly" starts with "b" and the sound of "b" is "ber"

This is what the Trainers at MindChamps Reading told me during the PTC for my child.

What is your child’s interest?

How about going on a short trip? That could occupy about a week?