146 Entries

A Back to School Must Have!

When you help your child with their home readers or listen to them read, do you find that they, or you, become anxious and frustrated? Rather than being a pleasant experience, is it a tense time and you just wish it was all over? If you’ve answered ‘yes’, you’re not alone and if you’ve answered ‘no’, then we want what you’ve got!

For many parents and others who assist children as they learn to read, it’s a difficult time, especially if your child struggles with reading. Unless you have learnt how to teach children to read, it’s unlikely you’ll know how to do it. You may have a vague memory of how you learnt or what your parents and teachers said to you. Despite your best efforts, though, some of what you do as you support your child has the potential to turn them off reading.

When it comes to reading, Australian children are being left behind. International and national testing shows that Australia has the second largest proportion of children below the international intermediate benchmark among English speaking countries. Results from PISA show that reading standards have fallen dramatically this century. While NAPLAN results reveal some improvement in the percentage of children at National Minimum Standard (NMS) since NAPLAN was first introduced in 2008, children only have to get approximately 25% of the reading questions correct to be considered at NMS. Your child’s NAPLAN results may give you the impression that everything is fine when it may not be.

It’s important you say and do what will foster reading development, rather than discourage it. So, what are the best ways to encourage and support your child? Helping children become better readers … a guide for parents, caregivers, teachers and aides gives practical, and easily implemented approaches to support the developing reader. It identifies the reading behaviours of successful and less successful readers so you can see if your child is likely to make progress or not. The majority of the book is organised in the following way:

If your child … This identifies the reading behaviour

Then: This provides a possible reason or reasons for the behaviour.

So, you can: These are suggested ways to respond to the behaviour. Choose from several suggestions.

This is because: These are the reasons for the suggested ways to respond.

In a nutshell: This is a summary of the main points.

If you follow the ideas in the book, home reading will be enjoyable for you and your child your child will gain confidence, develop a love of reading and be more likely to seek a book for entertainment than a screen. Nobody persists with something they find too difficult, so it’s critical parents set their children up for success. We know that a small gap between your child’s reading level and that of others quickly becomes a large one that is almost impossible to close. Without strong reading skills, schooling is difficult for your child.

This book is available in all good bookstores and online at www.boolarongpress.com.au

Winners for this competition

1. R. WoodNSW
2. I. HarveyNSW
3. J. ByrneQLD
4. P. ChandraNSW
5. N. CartwrightVIC
6. C. ScarfoSA
7. H. KilpatrickNSW
8. J. SpagnoloNSW
9. A. O'DwyerNSW
10. R. MashfordNT