Published 2 min read
Good news if you worry that your own English isn't up to it: reading practice in the early primary years doesn't need a skilled teacher. It needs someone who sits down beside the child, every day. Fifteen minutes daily beats a two hour tutoring session once a week that gets skipped half the time. Reading is a skill that grows on frequency.
The 15 minute routine that actually works
- Minutes 1 to 3, review yesterday. Have your child read the same words or the same worksheet again. Starting with something they can already do opens up the brain.
- Minutes 4 to 10, one small new thing. A single new letter sound, or three new vocabulary words. Don't get greedy.
- Minutes 11 to 14, play with it. Send your child round the house to find something that starts with that sound, or have them draw the new word.
- The last minute, one specific piece of praise. Name the exact thing they did: You read sun all by yourself today.
The three mistakes parents make most often
- Correcting every misread word on the spot. Reading starts to feel like being caught out. Wait until the end of the sentence, then go back to the one word that mattered.
- Comparing your child to other children. At this age reading skills can sit a full year apart, and that gap says nothing whatsoever about how clever a child is.
- Stopping once your child gets good. The stretch where reading starts to flow is exactly the stretch to keep going, because the skill is about to settle in for good.
How to let worksheets do the heavy lifting
A worksheet with an answer key is a real help to a parent who isn't confident in English, because you never have to guess whether your child got it right. Look for worksheets with pictures and Thai instructions, so your child can work through them alone while you simply sit alongside. That company is the best thing you can offer anyway.