Good reading skills

Types of Reading Skills | PlanetSpark

How To Help Your Child Become A Better Reader

Reading is the foundation for success. When children develop reading habit early in their lives, they are more likely to be successful in school, work, and life in general.
That said, learning to read isn’t always an easy task for children, and that’s why it is crucial that you, as a parent, work with your child and encourage the habit of reading early in their lives. Spend time with them to ensure that your child develops the following essential reading skills.
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8 Essential Skills for Reading Success

The different types of reading skills are:

Decoding
Decoding is the ability to sound out words children have heard before but haven’t seen written out. This is a vital step in the reading process as it forms the foundation for other reading skills.
Decoding heavily relies on an early language skill called phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate different sounds into words. Children develop this awareness when learning about syllables, words, and sounds (phonemes).
Phonics
Phonics is the ability to recognize the connection between sounds and letters they make. This process of mapping the sounds in words to written words is a very important reading skill. Children first decode the words into sounds and encode the sounds into words as they write and spell.
Vocabulary
A good vocabulary is a fundamental part of academic success. This reading skill is necessary to understand the meaning of words, their definitions, and their context.
The more words a child knows, the better they are at reading and understanding the texts they read.
Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read aloud with understanding, accuracy, and speed. It is a skill needed for good reading comprehension. Kids fluent in reading know how to read smoothly, at a good pace, using proper tone, and without making too many errors.
Sentence Construction & Cohesion
Sentence construction and cohesion may seem like a writing skill, but it’s an essential reading skill. Connecting ideas between and within the sentences are called cohesion, and these skills are essential for reading comprehension.
Reading Comprehension
Understand the meaning of the text – both in storybooks and information books. In fiction books, children imagine the characters and share an emotional and adventurous journey with them. In non-fiction books, children gain new information, which deepens their understanding of new topics and concepts. Reading comprehension is a complex skill that requires time and practice to develop fully.
Reasoning & Background Knowledge
This skill helps the child use the background knowledge to make inferences and draw conclusions. Most readers can relate what they have read to what they know. They can also read between the lines to pull out the information when it’s not literally spelled out in the text.
Working Memory & Attention
These skills are closely related but different and are part of a group of abilities known as executive function. When children read, attention helps them absorb the information from the text, and working memory allows them to retain that information. This helps them gain meaning and build knowledge from what they read.

4 Different Types of Reading Techniques

Skimming
Skimming, sometimes referred to as gist reading, means going through the text to grasp the main idea. Here, the reader doesn’t pronounce each and every word of the text but focuses their attention on the main theme or the core of the text. Examples of skimming are reading magazines or newspapers and searching for a name in a telephone directory.
Scanning
Here, the reader quickly scuttles across sentences to get to a particular piece of information. Scanning involves the technique of rejecting or ignoring irrelevant information from the text to locate a specific piece of information.
Intensive Reading
Intensive reading is far more time-consuming than skimming and scanning as it needs the reader’s attention to detail. It involves close reading that aims at the accuracy of comprehension. Here, the reader has to understand the meaning of each and every word.
Extensive reading
Extensive reading lays more emphasis on fluency and less on accuracy. It usually involves reading for pleasure and is more of an out-of-classroom activity. It is highly unlikely for readers to take up the extensive reading of text they do not like.

4 Common Reading Problems

Issues with decoding
Beginner readers may struggle when they meet new or unfamiliar terms, but typically decoding becomes easier with repeated practice of reading the text out loud. If a child continues to struggle, there may be an underlying difficulty or a physical impairment that does not allow them to hear the sounds or see the letters.
Poor comprehension of reading skills
Some children can read like a pro but may not be able to tell you what they have read. This indicates a problem of incomprehension. These children may find the same difficulty when their teachers or parents read aloud.
Speed
The more children read, the more they expand their vocabulary. They begin to recognize more words by sight, enabling them to read faster. If speed is the issue with your child, slow processing of information could be the problem. Since reading is a cognitively demanding task, it involves holding information in the mind while continuously processing the text. This can exhaust the children with slow processing. Such children may require extra time to complete tasks that require extensive reading.
Mixed reading difficulties
Mixed reading problems in kids include decoding words and difficulty with comprehension. They have challenges when it comes to reading words, retaining information, and understanding the text. These problems could be due to a reading disorder. Although some kids learn slower than others, if you notice any difficulty that affects your child’s daily life, it should be evaluated by a professional.

How to Improve Reading Skills of a Child

Whatever reading problems your child is going through, there are always ways to help. Here are some ways you can help your child overcome their reading problems:
- Take note of what you are seeing when your child is reading. When you observe your child, you may start seeing patterns. Talk with your child’s teacher or caregiver to find out if they have observed something similar.
- Work on building reading skills at home. Teach sight words for fluency and quick recall. Use flashcards, point out words on the hoardings, brand names, or store names
- Always remember that if your child is struggling with any skill, it can make them feel inferior, and that can take a toll on their self-esteem. As your child works on their reading skills, make sure you praise their efforts and celebrate their small wins.
- Choose books that contain detailed visual illustrations to help your child connect the text with the scene.
- Get your child enrolled in online classes. PlanetSpark’s programme uses the essential skills for reading success to unlock all aspects of reading focusing on phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and reading for meaning.

6 Reading Comprehension Skills | Understood

Some people think of the act of reading as a straightforward task that’s easy to master. In reality, reading is a complex process that draws on many different skills. Together, these skills lead to the ultimate goal of reading: reading comprehension, or understanding what’s been read.

Reading comprehension can be challenging for lots of reasons. Whatever the cause, knowing the skills involved, and which ones your child struggles with, can help you get the right support.

Here are six essential skills needed for , and tips on what can help kids improve this skill.

1. Decoding

Decoding is a vital step in the reading process. Kids use this skill to sound out words they’ve heard before but haven’t seen written out. The ability to do that is the foundation for other reading skills.

Decoding relies on an early language skill called phonemic awareness. (This skill is part of an even broader skill called phonological awareness.) Phonemic awareness lets kids hear individual sounds in words (known as phonemes). It also allows them to “play” with sounds at the word and syllable level.

Decoding also relies on connecting individual sounds to letters. For instance, to read the word sun, kids must know that the letter s makes the /s/ sound. Grasping the connection between a letter (or group of letters) and the sounds they typically make is an important step toward “sounding out” words.

What can help: Most kids pick up the broad skill of phonological awareness naturally, by being exposed to books, songs, and rhymes. But some kids don’t. In fact, one of the early signs of reading difficulties is trouble with rhyming, counting syllables, or identifying the first sound in a word.

The best way to help kids with these skills is through specific instruction and practice. Kids have to be taught how to identify and work with sounds. You can also build phonological awareness at home through activities like word games and reading to your child.

2. Fluency

To read fluently, kids need to instantly recognize words, including words they can’t sound out. Fluency speeds up the rate at which they can read and understand text. It’s also important when kids encounter irregular words, like of and the, which can’t be sounded out.

Sounding out or decoding every word can take a lot of effort. Word recognition is the ability to recognize whole words instantly by sight, without sounding them out.

When kids can read quickly and without making too many errors, they are “fluent” readers.

Fluent readers read smoothly at a good pace. They group words together to help with meaning, and they use the proper tone in their voice when reading aloud. Reading fluency is essential for good reading comprehension.

What can help: Word recognition can be a big obstacle for struggling readers. Average readers need to see a word four to 14 times before it becomes a “sight word” they automatically recognize. Kids with dyslexia, for instance, may need to see it up to 40 times.

Lots of kids struggle with reading fluency. As with other reading skills, kids need lots of specific instruction and practice to improve word recognition.

The main way to help build fluency is through practice reading books. It’s important to pick out books that are at the right level of difficulty for kids.

3. Vocabulary

To understand what you’re reading, you need to understand most of the words in the text. Having a strong vocabulary is a key component of reading comprehension. Students can learn vocabulary through instruction. But they typically learn the meaning of words through everyday experience and also by reading.

What can help: The more words kids are exposed to, the richer their vocabulary becomes. You can help build your child’s vocabulary by having frequent conversations on a variety of topics. Try to include new words and ideas. Telling jokes and playing word games is a fun way to build this skill.

Reading together every day also helps improve vocabulary. When reading aloud, stop at new words and define them. But also encourage your child to read alone. Even without hearing a definition of a new word, your child can use context to help figure it out.

Teachers can help, too. They can carefully choose interesting words to teach and then give explicit instruction (instruction that is specialized and direct). They can engage students in conversation. And they can make learning vocabulary fun by playing word games in class.

For more ideas, watch as an expert explains how to help struggling readers build their vocabulary.

4. Sentence construction and cohesion

Understanding how sentences are built might seem like a writing skill. So might connecting ideas within and between sentences, which is called cohesion. But these skills are important for reading comprehension as well.

Knowing how ideas link up at the sentence level helps kids get meaning from passages and entire texts. It also leads to something called coherence, or the ability to connect ideas to other ideas in an overall piece of writing.

What can help: Explicit instruction can teach kids the basics of sentence construction. For example, teachers can work with students on connecting two or more thoughts, through both writing and reading.

5. Reasoning and background knowledge

Most readers relate what they’ve read to what they know. So it’s important for kids to have background or prior knowledge about the world when they read. They also need to be able to “read between the lines” and pull out meaning even when it’s not literally spelled out.

Take this example: A child is reading a story about a poor family in the 1930s. Having knowledge about the Great Depression can provide insight into what’s happening in the story. The child can use that background knowledge to make inferences and draw conclusions.

What can help: Your child can build knowledge through reading, conversations, movies and TV shows, and art. Life experience and hands-on activities also build knowledge.

Expose your child to as much as possible, and talk about what you’ve learned from experiences you’ve had together and separately. Help your child make connections between new knowledge and existing knowledge. And ask open-ended questions that require thinking and explanations.

You can also read a teacher tip on using animated videos to help your child make inferences.

6. Working memory and attention

These two skills are both part of a group of abilities known as executive function. They’re different but closely related.

When kids read, attention allows them to take in information from the text. Working memory allows them to hold on to that information and use it to gain meaning and build knowledge from what they’re reading.

The ability to self-monitor while reading is also tied to that. Kids need to be able to recognize when they don’t understand something. Then they need to stop, go back, and re-read to clear up any confusion they may have.

What can help: There are many ways you can help improve your child’s working memory. Skillbuilders don’t have to feel like work, either. There are a number of games and everyday activities that can build working memory without kids even knowing it.

To help increase your child’s attention, look for reading material that’s interesting or motivating. For example, some kids may like graphic novels. Encourage your child to stop and re-read when something isn’t clear. And demonstrate how you “think aloud” when you read to make sure what you’re reading makes sense.

Key takeaways

Decoding, fluency, and vocabulary skills are key to reading comprehension.
Being able to connect ideas within and between sentences helps kids understand the whole text.
Reading aloud and talking about experiences can help kids build reading skills.

10 Ways to Develop 9 Key Reading Skills Without Leaving Home

“We take reading for granted, yet numerous statistics show that many students, regardless of age or background, have difficulty in reading,” says Dr. Paula Tallal, world-renowned authority on speech development and founder of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University and scientific learning.

“Scientific research shows that the ability to read is one of the most difficult skills we can master in our lives. It has also been proven that the brain can change and develop at any age and, in fact, can be trained to read.”

According to the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, the National Reading Panel, the National Institute for Literacy and other research organizations, phonemic perception , phonetics, reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension, as well as cognitive skills: memory, attention, sequence and sound processing play an important role in the ability to read fluently.

Dr. Tallal shares how parents can help their school-age children develop these key skills at home:

understand that words are made up of sequences of phonemes, the smallest units of sound that affect the meaning of words.

How to develop phonemic awareness at home: by learning songs and poems and playing games with words (for example, "How many rhymes can you think of for the word 'cat'?").

2. Phonetics

Phonetics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds of spoken language) and graphemes (the letters and labels that represent those sounds in written language).

How to develop phonetics at home: Parents should help their children learn the alphabet by pointing out letters and saying them. Play letter games (e.g. "How many words can be made from the letters in the word 'spaghetti'?")

3. Reading fluency

Fluency is the ability to read text accurately and quickly. Experienced readers can automatically recognize words and understand their meaning.
How to improve reading fluency at home: Encourage reading aloud. Have the child read the same story over and over again. Parents should read to their children and watch how they read.

4. Vocabulary

Vocabulary consists of the words you need to know to be a successful reader.

How to build vocabulary at home: Parents can help children build a rich vocabulary by sorting out the meanings of words together. Encourage the use of an explanatory dictionary. Teach your child how to use contextual reading cues to understand the meaning of unknown words.

5. Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is the ability to extract meaning from a text. A good reader is aware of what he is reading.

How to work on language comprehension at home: Parents need to help their children develop healthy reading habits. To do this, help the child plan time so that he has time to read, make reading an element of encouragement, help select interesting books, and discuss with the child what he reads. Help to read meaningfully, including by answering the child's questions willingly and with interest, helping to understand something previously unknown or misunderstood.

6. Memory

Memory is the ability to store the information and ideas needed to recognize words, understand complex sentences, and remember instructions.

How to develop memory at home: Ask your child to retell stories or events that happened to him. Play memory games.

7. Attention

Attention is the ability to focus on a task while ignoring distractions. Free reading requires constant and focused attention.

How to work on developing attention at home: To increase attention span, parents should give their children a certain amount of time to complete a task, such as doing homework or reading. Children should also learn to read or study in a quiet room free of television, radio and other distractions.

8. Information processing

In the context of reading, information processing is the ability to distinguish and associate individual speech sounds with the corresponding letter and text forms.

How to work on processing at home: Playing with sounds helps train your ear to pick up and interpret sounds clearly and accurately.

9. Ordering

Ordering skills are necessary to create and maintain a system (for example, the order of letters in a word or the order of words in a sentence).

How to work on ordering at home: Use pictures to show your child how the story progresses. If your child is learning to write, make letter cards for him and mix them up so he can make words out of the letters.

10. Early Intervention

“The last and perhaps most important thing parents can do to help their children develop a reading brain is to recognize early when reading problems require additional intervention,” she added. Dr. Talla. “Early help is essential, especially through science-based methodologies with reading interventions targeting different areas of reading learning.

But if for some reason the need for special assistance did not immediately become clear, no matter how much time passed in the process of problematic and ineffective learning, it is never too late to help a person become an experienced reader!

Designed with the help of Dr.

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6 Key Reading Comprehension Skills

For some people, reading is like a walk in the park on a warm summer day, an enjoyable activity that is easy to master. In fact, reading is a complex process that involves many different skills. Together, these skills lead to the ultimate goal of learning to read: comprehensive reading comprehension.

Text comprehension can be difficult for children for many reasons, but regardless of them, knowing what underdeveloped skills this is due to, you will be able to provide your child with the best help.

Let's take a look at the six reading comprehension skills and how you can help your child develop them.