Most students in elementary school if they have been taught phonics should be able to read. But they don’t always understand what they are reading. They know the mechanics of reading but they need more experience in what the words and sentences mean.
The best thing you can do is buy your child a child’s dictionary so she can look up the words by herself. If your children like the internet find a free dictionary on the internet they can use. This will save your sanity. If your children ask you what this word means just tell them to look it up in the dictionary, so they get into the habit of looking up words.
If their reading is really a problem try to get them to read more. As they say practice makes perfect. Try switching off the TV and computer games and get your children to spend more time on books. If you have more than one child get the older children to teach the younger children.
If you are a teacher try and set up a buddy system by pairing up a good reader with a not so good reader and see if this works. If you have class groups in the classroom use a competition that states the group that can improve the reading ability of the lower students is the winner. Don’t always encourage the top students.
Try to encourage the top students to help the not so good students. Most students love showing how good they are so use them to help other problem students.
