Reading Skills For Kids

Pre-Reading Skills

Pre-reading skills are the skills children need in order to help them to become a reader. Many of these skills are learnt naturally, during the course of a normal childhood, athome and in the nursery/preschool environment. By talking and reading with your child, you will be doing a great deal to help these essential skills to develop.

|[pic]|Matching: When we read, partof what we do involves matching. Children learn to match shapes, patterns, letters |
| |and, finally, words.|
|[pic]|Rhyming: Research shows that children who can understand about rhyming words have a head start in learning to |
| |read and, even more, to spell.|
|[pic]|Letter skills: As well as recognising letter shapes, learning the most common sounds that each letter makes will |
| |give childrena head start. |
|[pic]|Direction: Print goes from left to right, so children will need to be familiar with whereto start each line and |
| |which direction to go in. |
|[pic]|Motor skills: Practicing writing letters andwords as they learn to read them will help it all to sink in, so a |
| |good pencil grip and control is useful. ||[pic]|Concepts of print: This is all about knowing how to handle books - holding them the right way up, turning the |
| |pages in sequence, exploring the pictures, knowing that the words can beread to tell a story. |
|[pic]|Language skills: The more experience children have of language, the more easily they will learn to read. Your |
| |child needs to hear and join...