How to teach your child to Read, Write and Comprehend - For Primary Schoolers

Schooling and teaching kids in today's context is an art. By the time we learn it, they don’t need it anymore!!!! But that is another story… Today’s Parents seem to connect with their child like never before. We as parents often find ourselves helpless, trying to correct our child and being met with resistance such as: ignoring, whining, yelling, answer back and the best of all, ‘my teacher told me!’ What could be better than a school which takes an initiative to educate parents over a weekend… To teach us how to reach out to our child so we can help them learn? Now when my daughter tells me, ‘my teacher taught me’, I will retort with, ‘your teacher taught me’… And no ordinary run-of-the-mill teachers these. They are some sort of engineers, equipped with tools and techniques, they know how to manage my kid better than me, at-least when it comes to her education. They seem to have mastered these methods that touches the child's psyche and lets her enjoy learning.

It was one of the best spent Saturday mornings, when I went to my daughter’s school to learn… along with several other parents. We were met with a bunch of highly motivated education engineers. We learnt some solid techniques to hone language and writing skills of our children. My belief is that language skill is the primary skill that we must teach our kids. We cannot do away with language no matter what subject they choose later. You don’t write a thesis in Maths with numbers, do you? To write a thesis you use advanced words, writing style and text!

Some easy steps that we learnt that Saturday, for our primary school goers:

1.     What is comprehension? It is the ability to understand a passage, a story or a book and to summarise it in one’s own language. It takes some time for the kids to learn this skill. Your child will be able to comprehend a passage fully by Std IV

Few aspects of Comprehension:

§  Making Connections

§  Visualising,

§  Sieving Out

§  Context Clues

And on higher order, child develops by Std IV:

§  Inferring

§  Summarising and Synthesising

2.     How do we help our child to write?

 

§  Help Them write thank you notes,

§  Encourage them to write letter and E mail to family,

§  Give writing as gift (A poem or a story),

§  Help them maintain a Journal or diary,

§  Help them make a travelogue,

§  Make a year review note book. 

Oooh that's a lot of work!!!! Easier said than done. In order for them to develop these writing skills...

§  Play stenographer initially… Write for them, while they dictate!

§  Play developing from kernel sentences...Example: I go... I go to school... I go to school on a bus... I go in the morning to school on a bus... I wake up in the morning and go to school on a bus... It is a game, each person takes turn to make the sentence longer... What say!

§  Use technology intelligently!!! Help them download some relevant aps. And we thought we could keep them away from iPads!!!

§  Use Graphic Organiser: An example of graphic organiser can be a chart - Write a word in the centre of a square, divide it into four parts, just like the 4 quadrants of 7 Habits, or like the 4 quadrants of the Johari window and on four corners write Definition, Characteristics, Examples, Non Examples of the word. Interesting isn't it?

Oh and if you thought that this is all that you could to do, look further:

§  When reading to the child talk about the style of writing. I will need to learn that all over…

§  Use writing prompts, such as a Mind Map, 5W one H (What, Why, When, Who, Where and How)... And you thought these are only talked about in soft skill sessions of corporate houses?

§  Start a story and let the child finish... How?

Ø  Start with Character Building, 

Ø  Build the plot

Ø  Find a solution

Ø  Have a climax. 

More tips: To answer questions, use the RACE strategy... What is race?

§  Restate the question

§  Answer all points of the question

§  Cite two to three examples

§  Explain how these examples connect with the answer.

Oh and if you have problem teaching the child to manage proper writing hygiene, here is a trick... COPS

§  Capitalise

§  Organise

§  Punctuate

§  Spelling

Make a COPS checklist, place it on the child's study table, she can check the points after she had finished writing.

You have done it all? Child will take time to learn don’t push her... of-course you don’t... This is what the teachers said:

§  Allow time

§  Respond meaningfully, don't tell her that you have done fantastic, tell her your language is good, your handwriting is good, you used a new word and that was super etc. etc...

§  Praise... if she got is all fine... If she got it wrong, don't tell her that, go to next step!

§  Help

§  Practice! Practice! Practice! See this is like Entertainment! Entertainment! Entertainment!

Don’t waste your time teaching grammar from a book, play some creative grammar games:

§  Picture cards for countable uncountable

§  Synonym Antonym game, you say present… she says absent etc.

§  Card Games for Verb, Adverb, Adjective, Noun... 

§  Card or word games for Singulars and plurals.

If you find your child using the wrong grammar, correct her, gently and subtly. One of the techniques I use is restating. Restate the sentence with correct grammar, without mentioning anything more than the correct sentence. And I agree they sound really cute when they use wrong grammar. Their teachers caution us, that it will become a habit and they will soon grow up with it!

No matter what the pressure, no point disheartening the child, confidence is the most valuable tool that we parents can give to our child. Some of us may never learn the grammar like our child will. Think of how it would feel if they started correcting our grammar in front our friends?

Some interesting Handwriting tips... wish someone knew this when I was a kid!!!! But now I mostly type...

There are two primary types of cursive letters, did you know that! Google these:

1.  Magic C words

2.  Tow Truck Letters

The cursive C is the key to correcting eighty percent of cursive errors children make, the other twenty percent is corrected by the Tow Truck Letters. But this is only my perception, internet is teeming with ideas you may want to use if you need cursive correction for your child. 

Did you know that, when the child writes with right hand, the right upper corner of the notebook should be tilted upward and for the left handed writer it is the opposite?

Did you know that, it is required for the child to use the free hand to hold the paper or note book when writing. If the child does not do it, name the free hand (left or right as the case may be… for example Charlie Chaplin) and when the free hand is not holding the paper, address Charlie Chaplin to please help her hold the notebook. Hmmm Charlie Chaplin will happily do it!

Okay so now you know…

Dear Readers, I am not an expert in this area and the above are my learning from experts in a meeting with them. I am sharing these ideas because I found them quite helpful as a parent.