This video provides several ideas for helping children improve their reading skills or their general readiness to begin reading.

If you think that your child or one of your students isn’t a particularly good reader, here are some ideas to help him or her overcome some of the more common reading challenges.

• Encourage her to tell stories about her experiences.
• Encourage him to tell stories about pictures in a photo album.
• Encourage her to sing songs or nursery rhymes that she knows.
• Encourage him to listen to books on tape.
• Take your child to story time at the local library.
• Ask someone else to read to your child.
• Improve your own reading skills.

How to choose a great book

• Match the interests and experiences of your child to reading material.
• Select books that are recommended.
• Read books that your child asks to have reread over and over again.

If your child often says “I don’t know”

• Ask your child to point to pictures or words that answer specific questions you ask.
• Stop before you and your child reach the end of a book and ask him to tell you the ending he would like best.
• Watch a TV show or movie based on a book. Then, read the book. Ask your child to tell you how the book and movie are the same and different.

If your child becomes restless

• It’s okay to stop reading at any point in the book.
• Come back to the book at the point you left off.
• Try a different book.
• Stop to talk about a picture to which the child is pointing.
• Hold your child’s hand in yours and write a word from a book you’ve read together.
• Encourage your child to “read” along with you as you point to the words.

You don’t feel like you have enough time

• Snuggle while you read.
• Think about how you feel while you read to your child.
• Think about how your child feels when you read to him.
• Think about the reasons that it might be hard to find time to read each day.
• Find ways to make more time in the day to read to your child.
• Ask yourself how you would rate reading with your child.