Supporting a Beginning Reader

I have a good friend who asked me for some advice to help her child improve in reading. The most important advice we decided was to allow her daughter to listen for her own mistakes. My friend usually jumped in immediately after a mistake. She is now waiting until her daughter can hear that something did not sound right. If her daughter finishes a sentence and something didn't sound right, she lets her know that what she read didn't sound quite right to her if her daughter didn't seem to notice. Her daughter is then asked to read the sentence again. If she gets stuck on a word then my friend helps her sound it out or tells her the word.

Joanne Meier wrote a great article at Reading Rockets that supplies some helpful information for parents supporting a beginning reader. Click on this title to get to the article. How to Read with a Beginning Reader

Check out this post for ways I suggest helping a reader fix a mistake when something didn't sound right.

The goal should be for a reader to stop when something doesn't sound right. Let a beginning reader know how proud you are when he or she stops and rereads to fix a mistake without being told. Encourage a reader to reread from the beginning of a sentence if he or she had to work hard on a few words and the flow of the sentence or meaning of the story became interrupted by sounding out words.