Someone Read Aloud Before A Child Go To School

(Mehr Parwar, Rawalpindi)

One of my previous articles was on the topic ‘The Power of Story Reading in Early Grades’ in which I tried to elaborate the Importance of story reading along with some strategies to read and tell story for young children. This article is also relevant to the previous one. It talks about ‘Read Aloud To A Child Before He Go To The School’. The article put emphasis on the parents and teachers to read loudly for their child and make it regular practice at home to lay a strong foundation for learning. I would strongly recommend the parents and teachers to read this article and share it with all your friends and relatives.

Children who successfully learn to read in the early age are well prepared to read for learning and for pleasure in the years to come. On the other hand, children who struggle with reading in lower Grades at a serious disadvantage. Academically, they have a much harder time and they increasingly fall behind in other subjects. Researchers, academicians and teachers recognize that success in school and throughout life depends in large part on the ability to read. This understanding accompanied by early intervention to build reading and surely loud reading to children at home from the early grades.

Reading aloud to children is the single most important activity that brings eventful success in reading. It is a fundamental ability for higher learning. Reading aloud gives opportunity to the children to develop their understanding and background knowledge and help them make the sense of what they see, hear, and read. The more they hear adults read aloud for them, the more their vocabulary grows and the more they come to know about their surrounding and the world.

Read aloud for your child in early days opens doors to interact, listen, speak and develop relationships with the surrounding and environment. Such practice prepares a child to read themselves later in their life. Reading with kids helps them feel close to parents and caretakers and make them able to understand the world around them. Parents are the first teachers and home is the first school of a child. Parents must bestow love for learning in the child and guide him to persevere on his own. To want to learn is more important than to teach. Parents’ words and actions have a profound influence on children. Parents do reading as a hobby can naturally serve as role models for children and boost their motivation and interest in reading. Reading with the children develops love of books. It helps the child to understand how a book works and to learn how much fun they can be. Read aloud for the children develop their association with books and make them feel pleasure and joy for reading. Furthermore, children get opportunity to use their senses; listening, seeing, touching and making sounds. They mimic expressions and repeat sounds and words. They talk on the pictures and have fun with rhythms and words. Spend time with the books and talk on the pictures and titles develops children’s imagination and fantasy for building language literacy. Vocabulary knowledge, letter recognition and phonemic awareness essentially improves a child’s ability to do well later in school life. The International Reading Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (1998) states, “The single most important activity for building these understandings and skills essential for reading success appears to be reading aloud to children”. Read with your child as often as possible is the best thing you can do to help him or her learn at school. It opens the door of opportunity for the parents to spend time together with their child in an enjoyable way and to build a strong and healthy relationship among them. Therefore, it is very important to start reading from the initial days. The ideal time to begin sharing books with children is during babyhood. Many researchers strongly demonstrate that the more children know about language and literacy before they arrive at school, the better equipped they are to succeed in reading. Skills such as development of oral language, alphabet awareness, phonological awareness and comprehensions development occur through loud reading at greater level.

Loud reading for the children at their early age develops love for books and demonstrate enthusiasm about reading as the children begin to explore being readers. Rosert K, 2007 states that through modelling and scaffolding by teachers and parents, children learn to recognize words automatically. It makes the children able to use their imagination and exploration of places, people and events beyond their own experiences. Consequently, it develops oral fluency, accuracy, speed and makes the text meaningful for the younger kids.

The practice of reading aloud should be continued throughout the grades and further in the life. Someone a parent or a family member even not being a high school graduate can practice reading aloud with his kids and brings significant results in child’s learning. It all can be possible when parents and teachers of young children understand the importance of reading development in early age. As the children grow, families should create an environment of reading at home. Books should be available everywhere in the home, like it’s your “daily bread.” (Amen) but make sure that this practice shouldn’t end when kids begin to read on their own.

There should be a country level objective to create life-time readers not only school life readers (who often stop reading after graduating from schools). The Government and non-government organizations must collaboratively carry programs to sensitize parents and teachers on their active role as parents and teachers in developing reading culture through arranging various ongoing sessions and awareness programs at school and community level. The principal and teachers can arrange sessions and reading days for parents and teachers to develop pleasure of reading. There should be scheduled time at school and home for reading aloud hours where adults and children sit and spend a spontaneous time in reading stories. Older siblings should be encouraged and appreciated for reading loudly for younger siblings while caring them at home. Children and parents should keep along with books while going out or when away from home or classroom---- while going on a journey or on a family trip. Parents and teachers should keep local published reading material. The story books should be short and illustrated with nice and attractive pictures to capture the young children’s interest. Family stories, stories of their own and stories of grand-parents essentially bring children towards reading. Allowing children to ask questions as more as possible construct their knowledge and thinking towards language development.

Mehr Parwar
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