Is Your Child Struggling With Reading, Writing Or Spelling?

Are you worried about your child`s progress in reading, writing or spelling? Often parents are concerned, but are unsure what to do to help. Here are a few simple tips which can really help:

1. Join a library and make time to spend with your child looking at books together. Shared enjoyment of the reading experience will foster a love of literature. Don`t worry if they enjoy the pictures more than the words. Some picture books can be really absorbing and cultivate the skills required in understanding the deeper meanings in books later on. Encourage comics for reluctant readers.

2. Use a variety of methods to help them with words they don`t know. Breaking the word down into different sections, spelling it out, looking at the size and shape of the word, reading on and going back to guess the word, predicting from the pictures can all be useful strategies.

3. When it comes to writing try a variety of stimulus to see what they respond to best. Do they enjoy music or pictures? Could they write a story about their pet? Try writing games like `consequences`.

4. Try to help them with spelling by grouping words with similar patterns together. and learn a few at a time.

5. It could be that your child is dyslexic or has another learning difficulty and would really benefit from extra tuition with a highly structured, multi-sensory approach. Dyslexics tend to need a lot of reinforcement within the teaching process as they often have what is known as `poor working memory`, so they have problems remembering things learnt previously.

6. Finally, whatever the problem, whether it is ability or confidence, you could always hire a private tutor. Even a few weeks worth of lessons can make a difference and bring about improved results.