How to Improve Reading Rate
I was just reading an article in the Reading Teacher journal which reminded me of what I have learned over the years. For those students who struggle with slow, labored reading, reading many books at their comfort level is a key to helping them read faster. If you think about it this way - when adults try to master something they usually take it slowly, in small learnable units. For example, when learning to dance, you start with a few basic steps and progress slowly as those steps are mastered. You don't start out with the hardest dances until you master the easier ones. The same holds true with cooking. You don't start with a 12 course meal. You start with making simple dishes and slowly work towards increasing complexity. Children need a lot of reading of texts which are a great deal of fun to them and which come easily to them. A child begins to dislike reading if they are continually forced to read books which are too difficult for them. So for independent reading, choose books that are easy for your child to read. When partner reading with you, books can be a little more challenging because you can tell your child the unknown words.
