Here’s how parents can ready their child for reading requirements

Florida State’s educational mandate is for students to be reading on grade level at the end of third grade. To achieve this goal, what can parents do to help their child?

Read aloud daily for 10, 15 minutes even when an infant! To read aloud to your child, hold a book or any reading material, turn individual pages, sweep eyes left to right as our culture’s way of reading, and change voice tone/inflections for different punctuation effects. By modeling reading, parents are demonstrating print has meaning, the first important reading readiness/early learning literacy skill.

Establishing a reading routine helps the child learn that books have front and back covers with the names for the author and illustrator. If your child attends daycare and they have the Nemours BrightStart! Early Literacy Success Program, say “Yes” to have your child participate in it. Being a research-based program, NBS is failure-free and geared toward the different types of learning styles children are exhibiting in today’s classrooms.

Enrolling in VPK is the last step before kindergarten to increase reading readiness and early learning literacy skills. Both parental involvement and permission will be needed to achieve Florida’s grade 3 educational mandate.

This story was originally published September 20, 2017 at 4:47 PM with the headline "Here’s how parents can ready their child for reading requirements."