Parents Should Teach Their Children to Read

It is the parents' responsibility to teach their kid to read. Don't wait for the teachers to do the work. Reading is one of the most important skills that a child should acquire at any early stage -- the earlier the better. Illiteracy is becoming a growing problem in the United States. Many school children are unable to read, or their reading proficiency is very low. 

The United States is the most affluent and technologically advanced of all the industrial nations on earth. With its “free” compulsory education for all, a network of state-owned and state-operated teachers’ training colleges, strict teacher certification requirements, and more money and resources dedicated to education than any other nation on earth, the appalling illiteracy rate of the country is a disgrace to educators. Teaching children to read should be the foremost responsibility of all parents. Well, sometimes you cannot blame the parents, because they themselves may be poor readers to begin with—it is something like the blind leading the blind.

29 Steps to Teach Your Smart Kid to Read

This is a 117-page book on teaching children to read. It is the responsibility of parents, not the teachers, to teach children to read. There are 29 steps that begin as early as babies are only one-month old. These steps span over the infant stage, the pre-reading stage, the reading-readiness stage, the reading stage, the reading reinforcement stage, and the writing stage.

STEP 1:   Developing Motor Abilities & Sensory Perception

STEP 2:   Initiating Imitation

STEP 3:   Developing Thinking

STEP 4:   Pointing at Things

STEP 5:   Developing Active Speech

STEP 6:   Familiarizing with the Orientation of Print

STEP 7:   Teaching Perception and Discrimination

STEP 8:   Teaching Visual/Perceptual Consistency

STEP 9:   Auditory, Visual Sequencing, and Memory Skills

STEP 10: Introducing Finger Painting

STEP 11: Beginning Writing Skill

STEP 12: Introducing Nursery Rhymes and Lullabies

STEP 13: Introducing Picture Story Books

STEP 14: Teaching Prediction

STEP 15: Teaching Word Recognition

STEP 16: Teaching the Alphabet

STEP 17: Teaching Pronunciation

STEP 18: Developing Independent Reading

STEP 19: Learning Sounds and Their Letters

STEP 20: Encouraging Printing

STEP 21: Lap Reading

STEP 22: Shared Reading

STEP 23: Paired Reading

STEP 24: Teaching Language Irregularities

STEP 25: Extending Sight Vocabulary

STEP 26: Encouraging the Use of Symbols

STEP 27: Exploring Different Modes of Discourse

STEP 28: Creating a Proper Writing Environment

STEP 29: Teaching the Sentence

These steps with games and activities, as well as interactions with parents, will develop and enhance the basic reading skills necessary for ultimate reading proficiency.

The steps are based on how the author taught his daughter to read more than three decades ago; she learned how to read as soon as she turned three, and now she is an attorney in the United States.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau