“How do I help my child read better?” is the number one question I am asked by parents. It’s the start of a new school year and it’s time to plan a series of reading parent workshops.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than talking to parents about reading and reading strategies. Parents are so receptive to reading support. Having  learned so much during the last two years of my dyslexia therapist journey, I am always eager to share my experiences and newfound knowledge with parents.

How Can Parents Help Their Children Become Better Readers?

Teachers often recommend that parents have their children read for 20 minutes each day, but most parents I have talked to want actionable steps for helping their children with reading. As a dyslexia specialist I address foundational reading skills on a daily basis. My therapeutic curriculum is copyrighted so I had to think about general resources I could share with parents. The need for copyright-free resources for parents influenced what products I needed to create in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Teaching parents strategies that help with common homework concerns such as weekly spelling list and high-frequency words was also top of mind. With a pen in hand, I scribbled out a list:

• Oral language
• Phonological awareness
• Phonemic awareness
• Spelling
• Six Syllable Types

Quickly realizing an hour would not be enough time to cover all the components on my list, I decided that this first workshop would have to be a general overview of foundational reading skills. Subsequent workshops could then be scheduled in order to do a “deep dive” into each critical area.

Teach Parents The Science of Reading to Help Their Children Become Better Readers

As a dyslexia specialist, I want everything I present to be rooted in the Science of Reading and that includes parent workshops. I decided to begin with Gough and Tumner’s (1986,1990) Simple View of Reading.

Starting with the Simple View of Reading gives parents the “big picture of reading.” While my K-2 workshop will primarily focus on word recognition skills, it is important to include a few aspects of language comprehension as well.

The Simple View of Reading naturally leads to a brief discussion of Scarborough’s Reading Rope (2001). For my presentation, I created two slides to present a deconstructed reading rope for the workshop. There is a fine line between giving parents important information about the Science of Reading and being too technical and getting bogged down in the weeds. I decided to spend most of my time focusing on phonological awareness and decoding. Since oral language is the foundation of reading I will address background knowledge and vocabulary first.

Start with Oral Language to Help your Child Become a Better Reader

Oral language is the easiest area for parents to address at home. It involves little to no preparation. One of my favorite places to develop oral language is at the grocery store. I tell parents to start with the produce section: artichokes, egg plants, radishes, blackberries, raspberries, plums, zucchini, and pears.

Many of my students struggle to name fruits and vegetables outside of common foods such as apples, oranges, carrots, and corn. The produce section of your local grocery store is brimming with rich vocabulary opportunities! I once worked with a student whose mother was vegan so that student could name any fruit or vegetable! The bakery section and meat department are also filled with rich vocabulary opportunities.

Selecting Nonfiction Books and Engaging in Wide-Reading Help Children Become Better Readers

I always recommend reading nonfiction books to support your child’s reading at home. Nonfiction books are an excellent way to build your child’s background knowledge about animals, scientific concepts, historical figures, and events. Your local public library is filled with free books on a variety of topics.

Check out several books on ocean animals, the solar system, or the water cycle. We all need to hear things more than once. Reading aloud to your child will improve their listening skills and listening comprehension. Listening comprehension supports reading comprehension. Hearing lots of words also supports your child’s ability to decode words. It is a lot easier to read a word you have already heard. Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in the upper grades and directly affects reading comprehension.

Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness, and Spelling are Key to Helping Your Child Become a Better Reader

A hands-on workshop naturally requires the use of manipulatives to teach parents about the foundational skills of phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and spelling. A large part of planning for the workshop included creating a bag of resources for parents to use at home with their children. With a pen in hand, I quickly write a second list:

• Write and wipe pockets
• Dry erase markers
• Magnetic wands
• Magnetic chips
• Plastic chips
• Alphabet flashcards
• Heart word flashcards
• CVC games
• Chart of graphing spelling words
• Tools 4 Reading Sound Wall Folders

A Workshop Filled with Reading Strategies for Helping Children Become Better Readers

As soon as the school day ended, I rushed to the library to set up for the workshop. Frantically cleaning the tables and arranging chairs for the event, I set up the drinks and plates along a table at the back of the library. After organizing the handouts into three-ring binders and placing them next to the sign in sheet, I quickly reviewed my Canva presentation and made a few last-minute changes. 

A few minutes later my administrators arrived with hot pizza and fresh salad as parents began to file into the school library. I welcomed parents and students as they entered. After signing in and collecting their materials the parents and students dined on pizza and salad. 

After weeks of planning, I stood at the front of the library and introduced myself; the workshop was finally underway. I walked the parents through the progression of phonological awareness. We discussed simple versus complex tasks and practiced each task.

Hands-on Activities that Help Children Become Better Readers

My Favorite Resources for Helping Your Child at Home

Magnetic wands and magnetic chips are always a crowd pleaser at parent workshops. I lead the parents in segmenting and graphing a carefully selected list of words. They enjoyed blending the phonemes or sounds in each word using the magnetic wand and chips. The parents were shocked when I graphed the word “shark” as sh-ar-k! The digraph “sh” really threw them for a loop. “Oh, this is fun!” commented a mother as she used the magnetic wand to pick up the magnetic chips. 

I am not proposing that parents complete a reading course in order to help their children with homework. I am proposing that we as educators share examples of sound-symbol correspondences rather than asking parents to have their children write spelling words five times each.

Two parents had questions about their children looking away from the words and focusing on the pictures while reading. I explained that as a specialist, my goal is to always teach my students to decode the words without using pictures. As students progress in each grade, they will encounter books that do not contain pictures. The following day I printed University of Florida Institute(UFLI) decodable readers for the parents.

Overall, the workshop was a great success. The parents took lots of notes and asked a lot of questions specific to their children’s learning needs. One thing is abundantly clear, parents are desperate for effective reading strategies for helping their children at home.  

Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice.

Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2(2), 127–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00401799. 

Also read:

Help My Child Learn to Help My Child Learn to Read!

Free Reading Resources for Parents