Top Tips

• The best books for young learners have short sentences, great pictures, and sometimes, interesting textures. Stop reading at a point in a story that leaves the listeners wanting to hear more. This may be at the end of a chapter or even in the middle of a sentence. Suspense keeps the listeners engaged...
• It’s good to share favourite stories again and again. Repeating phrases helps build children’s language.
• Ask questions that push the listeners to make predictions about what will happen next in the story.
• Review what happened in the story every few pages as needed, using two or three short summary statements before beginning to read the next part aloud.

• If you can become involved in your children’s reading at the earliest possible age, you will have a more profound and longer lasting an effect on their literacy.
• A whopping 82 per cent of adults read to wind down, with more than one in three finding it hard to sleep if they haven’t read before bedtime.
• Top medical experts say that reading is beneficial to your health, lifts your mood and reduces feelings of loneliness.
• A survey of secondary schoolchildren showed they thought reading books helps them to become better writers.
• Research shows that more than income or social status, families with a home environment that encourages learning, will have the most powerful impact on their child’s school performance.

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