Reading aloud gives you a chance to see how accurate your child’s reading is. Reading together affords you an opportunity to discuss the book together, which will let you know how much your child is actually comprehending. From there you can determine if your child needs easier or slightly harder books to read. If you’re not sure, err on the side of easy to get started. First and second graders (and older children too!) still like picture books, and why not! They’re fun, colorful, short, and easy to read.
Cater to your child’s interests. Find joke books, poems, humorous books, mysteries, or even thrillers if that’s what your child likes. Don’t make him read about dinosaurs if he has no interest. His teacher may make him read things outside of his interest, but you don’t have to.
Take note of the different parts of the book. Point out the title, author, title page, and table of contents if there is one. Use the table of contents to find the page you need. If it’s a non-fiction book, it may have an index or glossary at the back. Take note of the page numbers, and use them to find your place. Then in school, when your child’s teacher says, “turn to page 15,” your child will know how to do it.
Notice where a sentence begins and ends. Picture books are great for having just one sentence on a page, and you can notice how a sentence is written with a capital at the beginning and a period at the end. When you read aloud together, practice taking a short pause at the end of each sentence. (Some children tend to run all of the sentences together when reading aloud.)
This is also a good time to take note of how paragraphs begin with an indent. I’ll never forget being in 3rd grade and having my teacher ask me to “read the next paragraph.” I knew where to start, but had no idea where to end. I paused after each sentence and looked at my teacher to ask if I should stop there. Later my mom showed me what a paragraph was. It’s a simple thing, but nobody had ever shown me that before!
When your child comes to an unknown word, don’t jump in to read it for him. Let him have a few seconds to try to sound it out. This is called giving him wait time. Be respectful of your child’s ability to figure it out! If, after a few seconds, he truly cannot decode it, give him clues. Help him learn to sound it out by looking at each individual letter and making the letter sound. If every word in the book is a puzzle, however, the book is probably too hard for him and will cause too much frustration. In that case, you should become the reader and let your child just listen and follow along. You can pick an easier book next time.