What You Can Do if Your Child is Reading Below Grade Level
Is your child reading below grade-level? Do they still struggle with common, familiar words? Struggling with reading is super common, but the reality is your child isn’t just going to “grow out of” these problems.
Watch this video where Dr. Amy Moore explains her research on individuals with dyslexia and reading struggles (and why early intervention is so critical):
Ways to Help Struggling Readers
These strategies don’t teach reading necessarily, but they help create a “bank” of skills your child can draw on to become more successful and confident readers:
Play games.
Games are some of the best ways to build memory, logic & reasoning, and other processing skills that are essential for reading. Even if the games aren’t “word games,” all of these skills connect and play a part in building confidence, fluency, and ease with reading! Check out some of our favorites here.
Read out loud.
Expose them to words and the sounds/rhythms of a variety of stories. While just reading to your child is not enough to make them successful readers, it is essential for building a love and motivation for reading!
Practice comprehension early.
Giving meaning to the words they can read and helping them feel successful wherever they are (even if it’s just in listening to you read) helps them become critical thinkers. Comprehension is an essential part of successful reading, so ask lots of questions, draw pictures of stories you read, and help them build their comprehension skills as early as possible!
Evaluate cognitive skills.
The reality is that reading is complex. It requires lots of unique skills to function together in order to be successful. If any of the skills are weak, reading is going to continue to be a struggle.
Skills like auditory processing, working memory, attention, logic & reasoning, and visual processing all play a critical role in successful reading.
What if your child’s reading struggle isn’t a “reading” issue?
What if it’s a weakness with memory (being able to quickly recall the sounds each letter makes)?
What if it’s a weakness with attention (they just can’t focus on the text long enough to extract any meaning from the words)?
What if it’s a weakness in auditory processing (they can’t put sounds together in their head, so there’s no way we should expect them to be able to do it while reading)?
These are the kinds of questions we ask at LearningRx to get back to the root of your child’s reading struggles to help them become confident, successful, and motivated readers.
Some Reading Pitfalls to Avoid:
There are lots of dangerous myths that circulate about teaching your child to read. In fact, if you’re holding on to some of these (no matter how well-intentioned), you may be delaying your child’s reading success.
→ Believing that just reading to your child is enough.
As we mentioned above, we DO believe in reading out loud to your kids. Research affirms that this is critical for development. However, it is NOT enough to just read to your kids and hope they’ll “catch on.”
At best, this turns them into good guessers who can figure their way through familiar words. But for many, they don’t develop the skills they need to read fluently and confidently.
→ Just giving it time and waiting for it to “click.”
This one is super common! However, as Dr. Amy found in her research, time does not help reading struggles get better. Instead, intervening and building cognitive skills is what makes the biggest difference in your child’s ability to read effectively!
→ Switching curriculum to find the “right” fit.
If you or your child’s school is on a curriculum carousel trying to find something that works for your kid, it can feel like an exhausting cycle of trial and error.
Instead of changing curriculum, we recommend changing your child’s brain skills in order to help them learn effectively in the first place!
We have a FREE brain skills quiz that can give you an idea of which skills are weaker areas for your child. Take it today to start getting the answers you need to help them succeed.
If you have a struggling reader and want some REAL answers about how to get them caught up and reading successfully, contact us today to learn more about how we can help.
