Parents scold their child for slow reading or are looking for a miracle way to teach a child to read fast, not thinking that every child has individual developmental peculiarities which proves dra reading level test. Some people are just ready to “give up” on school failure, because they were born that way. Both are extremes. Here are a few games and exercises to help develop reading speed.

Discuss this article (3 comments already)
Post your own article
Learning to read is a long process. Among other things, it requires the child to “make a discovery” – to understand how a series of graphic images – letters – turns into a sound word. It is not easy, and every child makes such a discovery at the moment when his intellect and life experience allow him to do so. There is no need to rush things and complain that your neighbor’s son was already reading fluently at age 5, and yours is slow at 7. With time it will level out.

But this process should not be left to chance: if a child is already reading, it is necessary to develop his reading technique. After all, a well-read schoolchild does better in all subjects including knows what is multiples of.

How can a child learn to read quickly and correctly in 1st grade and older?
To begin with we must realize that different mechanisms are involved in the process of reading. It is attention, diligence and observation on the one hand, and different functions of the brain on the other. Motivation is also important. If a child is not interested, he or she will not want to read.

A child must remember the letterforms and learn to relate them to sounds, and not to the actual sound, but to the model of that sound that exists in the human mind. We adults do this without thinking, as a matter of habit, it is difficult for a child, because the thinking processes that are involved are complex and manifold.

Three problems of low reading speed
Problem 1. reading itself
Let’s say a child wants to read, but it comes out badly so far. See below for exercises for reading fast.

When a person reads, he/she:

he distinguishes the letters;
puts them into words;
understands the meaning.
These are the areas we need to work on.

Problem 2: Distinguishing letters
Exercise “Letter Joker”.

Prepare cards on which are written rhymes or proverbs, riddles. All letters are “normal” and there is something wrong with three or four of them: they are standing “on their heads” or “lying on their sides,” written in a different font or color, stylized (sun instead of O, a construction crane instead of G, etc.). Let the baby read. As time passes, more and more letters can be written unusually.

Exercise “Fly.”

Imagine what a fly would say if it could speak in human language: “What a zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! Gee, I didn’t get it!”. And the snake? “Ssshasssssstly osssstly osssstly osssstly.” And the dog? “Good morning,” etc. Try talking for these animals.

Exercise “Who’s Bigger.”

You have to come up with words to a given letter.

Exercise “Chain”.

The game on the principle of “Cities”, but any words, as long as the first letter of the subsequent word coincides with the last letter of the previous one: Mama – Orange – NoS – Strongman -…)

Exercise “Crossing out”

A good effect is given by “crossing out. For this exercise it is necessary to prepare sheets with any accessible to the child texts, printed in large print. The child is given a task (say, cross out the letter A) and within three minutes does it. The meaning of the task is not “cross out as many letters as possible,” but “don’t miss a single one.

Later, it is possible to complicate the task. For example, “You may cross out A in red and B in green. Or, “You may cross out A and circle B.”

The rules are .

You can take a child’s magazine if you have read it, but not a book – you can’t draw on a book.
You should not write down the task – the child must keep it in mind.
The letters should be changed. It is good to give “rare” letters from time to time: F, Ъ, Sch, etc.
It is necessary to cross out every day for 3 minutes, it is better to buy an hourglass for this purpose.

Reading Comprehension
It is not uncommon for a teacher to complain that a child reads at a good speed but cannot answer elementary questions about the text. This happens because the student reads thoughtlessly, “on automatic”. This, of course, should be avoided. And help teach to read consciously can be games and entertaining exercises. Some of them see below.

Most of these games with cards. All games in this group are suitable for activities alone or in pairs with an adult. The exception is “Typewriter,” usually this game involves the whole class, sometimes even the teacher.

Exercise “Tarabar language”.

“A scientist was learning a gibberish language, and he wrote down the words on cards. But here’s the problem! – All the cards got mixed up. Help the professor to put the cards with the words into piles: put all the same words in one pile.”

For the game you have to prepare several groups of cards with pseudo words: 5-7 pieces each. Pseudowords should differ slightly – by one or two letters, the order of letters, etc. For example, you can use such “gibberish words”: “SHURBURKA”, “SHURBURGA”, “SHURBURGA”, “SHUBRURKA”, “SHUBRUKRA”, etc.

The game develops spelling sharpness, in addition, it is one of the simple and fun ways to improve your reading technique.

Exercise “Letter in a Bottle.”

An old and well-known game, which, nevertheless, is very liked by elementary school students and has a great effect: it improves spelling sharpness, expands the vocabulary, develops attention, ingenuity, creativity and the ability to understand other people.

In addition, the teacher can solve specific learning objectives, for example, to practice the spelling of doubtful consonants or Ъ and ь and offer to review the https://argoprep.com/blog/personification/. Then it is necessary to skip the corresponding letters, and give children the task not to read, but to finish writing the words.

“A bottle was fished out of the sea, and in it – no, not lemonade! – A real letter that someone sent us. Could it be children from a distant island? Or perhaps sailors in distress? We need to find out what’s in the letter, but – here’s the trouble! – many of the words are damaged by the water. Still, you and I will try to make out what is written here, in case someone urgently needs help!

The “letter” can be of any reasonable content. “Erase” the letters, depending on how much children have already learned to read and play the game. The easiest option is one “disappearing” letter per two words, in the middle or at the end. Much harder to read if the first letter is missing or 2-4 letters in a row. You can’t miss letters in adjacent words.

Exercise “What’s in the picture?”

You can play in a group or in a teacher (parent)-student pair. The children look at the subject picture and discuss what is drawn. Then its description is made in writing, but in an unusual way: the first person writes one word, the second person writes two, the next (the third or the first if the game is in pairs) – three, and so on. You can break up your part of the text with punctuation marks or put them at the end.

Exercise “Typewriter”.

A large group of children play. Each receives a card with a letter, the letters are not repeated. A very well-read student can be given two letters so he or she doesn’t get bored. The teacher calls a word and the guys “type” it, that is, clapping in turn those children who got the right letters. For example, Anna got the letter A, Oleg got O, Sasha got C, Vera got B and Dasha got D. The teacher says the word “owl”. Sasha claps first (he has C), then Oleg, then Vera and then Anya. Dasha did not have to “type” this time, but she will have to do it when the teacher says, for example, “garden”. The children should clap by themselves, without the teacher reminding them. Usually a few active children will begin to spontaneously follow the process and remind them, “Ver, clap!” If they make the remarks correctly, it is possible not to forbid them.

Exercise “True and False” (“I Do Not Believe”)

Again, cards are needed. On some you have to write truthful phrases and on others wrong ones. Examples:

“Many people love lilies of the valley: they are beautiful and smell wonderful” – true;
“As usual, we decorated a birch tree for the New Year” – false.
Problem 3. motivation
A child in the first grade does not have so much opportunity to love reading. The most interesting books are not available to him because of their volume, which they are not yet “up to their ears”. So what can you do?

First, read out loud. Agree that you read a page, and then your child reads one sentence, etc.

Secondly, try to find a book with short texts that are interesting for a schoolchild. These can be:

book of poems;
a collection of anecdotes;
a children’s (really children’s!) encyclopedia;
comic books.
Finally, use external motivation: a game, etc.

Don’t give your child a thick book with small print and no pictures. The text should be grouped in small “portions”, printed in different colors and fonts, decorated with colorful illustrations. A child gets lost and frightened at the sight of a whole page of text.
Never make reading a punishment or offer a reward for it: sweets, extra time playing on the computer… Otherwise reading will begin to seem boring and disgusting.
If possible, read the work first, and then watch a movie or cartoon. Say, “Look, but that joke – remember how you laughed! – is not in the movie. Of course, the director can’t put everything into the movie, the book is always more interesting.
Read! Let your child see that you like reading. Talk about what you’ve read.