Is This Book Too Hard For My Child to Read?

 

            Nothing's more frustrating than picking up a book that looks interesting, but when you start to try to read it, the vocabulary is 'way over your head.

 

            That shouldn't happen when a parent selects books to read aloud to a child. But you never know!

 

            Here's a rule of thumb for choosing books to read aloud to your child: open it up to a page at random, and start reading. If you come to one unfamiliar word that you can't pronounce, and it isn't a foreign word or a humorous, made-up, Dr. Seuss-style word, then that book is probably too difficult for you to be reading, much less reading to your child.

 

            On the other hand, when your child is catching on to reading in the early grades, and you're helping him or her select books in the library, there's a different rule of thumb: when the child opens up that book at random to a page and encounters up to three unfamiliar words, that's OK.

 

            The idea is to keep stretching the child's vocabulary, but finding a balance between text that is too easy and doesn't introduce new words at all, and too difficult, which will be frustrating and a turnoff. Three words per page is about the maximum. Teach your child to read with a dictionary at hand. When he or she encounters an unfamiliar word, it should be a habit to stop, look up the word in the dictionary, and then keep reading. That will help a ton with reading comprehension and vocabulary growth.

 

            Don't worry if the books you like to read to your child have big words that you fear are 'way over your child's head. They probably aren't, because your child is using the cues you're giving in everything from pronunciation to context to help familiarize himself or herself with more advanced vocabulary.

 

            Keep in mind that a child's oral vocabulary is always several years ahead of his or her reading vocabulary. That means that the child might be able to understand words spoken aloud that he or she would never be able to comprehend in printed text.

 

            By Susan Darst Williams • www.GoBigEd.com • Read to Me 001 • © 2006