10 Steps to Teaching Your Child to Read
Teaching your child to read can feel overwhelming—especially when you’re not sure what to teach first or the methods you learned as a child aren’t working for your beginning reader.
The good news is that you don’t need to be a reading teacher to help your child learn.
These 10 steps to teaching your child to read will help you build important early literacy skills while keeping reading positive and encouraging. We’ll move from reading together and building confidence into sight words, letter sounds, phonics, blending, and eventually more independent reading.
And if you’d rather have a teacher guide the lessons for you, you can also use our complete Reading Patch Learn to Read Program FREE
1 Model Reading
The first step in teaching a child to read is to model it by reading. You can read to your child or you can choose a book of your own to read. If your kids see you reading, it builds an interest in books. Ultimately your child looks up to you, and wants to be like you. So, before you even push
reading skills, show them how amazing reading can be.
2 Read to Your Child
Reading to your child can fall under modeling, but it is crucial to start reading to your child at a young age. Reading to your child even before they can talk gets your child interested and excited about reading books. It also helps them identify words, build comprehension, and confidence in reading.
3 Walk through the Book
Before a child can read a book on their own, they have to be able to understand the book as well as written language. Talk about the pictures in the book and ask questions such as:
● What do you think this book will be about?
● Where does this story take place?
● What happens if we start the book from the back?
● What do you think will happen next?
Using questions is a great way for kids to comprehend what they are hearing.
4 Use Your Finger When You Read
When you read a book to your child, begin by reading slowly and using your finger to point at each word. Your child will begin to recognize words that you point at. He or she will also learn that you read from left to right and up to down on the page. You don’t even have to teach this unless you want to. Just reinforce it each time you read.
5 Build a Child’s Confidence
Confidence matters when a child is learning to read.
If every reading experience feels difficult, a beginning reader can quickly decide, “I’m not good at reading.” That’s why we intentionally give children opportunities to experience success from the beginning.
Celebrate small victories. A letter sound remembered, a familiar word recognized, or one sentence read independently may not seem like much to an adult—but to a beginning reader, those moments matter.
We want children developing reading skills while also beginning to believe:
“I can read!”
6. Introduce a Few High-Frequency Words
We introduce a small number of useful, frequently occurring words early in the Reading Patch program.
Why?
Recognizing a few common words allows a beginning reader to start experiencing meaningful reading very quickly. Instead of struggling through every word on a page, the child begins recognizing familiar words and reading simple sentences.
Don’t overwhelm your child with long lists of words to memorize. Introduce a small number, practice them in context, and give your child plenty of opportunities to see and use them.
7. Teach Letters and Sounds Alongside Those Words
This is important: we don’t wait to teach phonics.
While children are beginning to recognize useful high-frequency words, we’re also teaching letters and the sounds they represent.
Practice noticing letters everywhere—in books, on signs, on packages, and around your home. Help your child connect each letter with its sound and gradually begin using those letter-sound relationships to read words.
As your child’s phonics knowledge grows, they’ll increasingly be able to decode unfamiliar words instead of relying on words they already recognize.
At Reading Patch, we don’t see sight words vs. phonics as an either/or decision. We use both strategically as children become stronger, more independent readers.
8 Work on Blending Sounds
Blending sounds can be difficult for children. Start with words that are meaningful to the child such as mom, dad, cat, dog. When you begin to help your child blend the sounds to sound out a word, start with three letter words. Don’t move on until they have mastered these three letter
words. Here are some games to help ease the stress of this part of reading:
CVC Word Builders Activity Cards
Blending Puzzles
Roll a Word
9 Begin Teaching Digraphs and Diphthongs
As your child’s decoding skills grow, begin introducing additional phonics patterns such as digraphs, vowel teams, blends, and other common spelling patterns.
For example, children can learn that sh represents /sh/ and ch represents /ch/.
Introduce new patterns gradually and give your child plenty of opportunities to use them while reading and building words.
10. Let Mrs. Karle Help You Teach Your Child to Read—FREE
You don’t have to figure out all of these steps by yourself.
The Reading Patch Learn to Read Program is completely FREE and walks your child through reading instruction step-by-step with Mrs. Karle, a master first-grade reading teacher with more than 30 years of classroom experience.
The program includes:
- 120+ guided video reading lessons
- High-frequency word practice
- Letter sounds and phonics
- Blending and word building
- Word ladders
- Printable practice worksheets
- Fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension practice
You provide the encouragement. Mrs. Karle provides the teaching.
Whether you’re a parent, grandparent, homeschooler, tutor, or teacher helping a beginning or struggling reader, you can start today at no cost.
