Active reading with parents during the school holidays can help young children avoid the "summer slump" and regress academically, according to an expert.
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Professor of cognitive psychology at La Trobe University's School of Education Pamela Snow said children who fall behind with their reading were also at risk "psycho-socially".
"Everything at school hinges on reading and writing proficiency across subject areas and across year levels," she said.
"Reading is a protective factor."
A critical aspect of early schooling, proficient reading is also key for children's emotional development and is linked to better classroom behaviour.
A psychologist and speech pathologist, Professor Snow's research focuses on optimising the transition to reading in the first three years of school.
Preschool
For children in prep or foundation years, it's all about making time to read to them.
"Remembering that we read to children not so much to teach them how to read but to expose them to the purpose of text," Professor Snow said.
Written text helps develop children's imaginations, builds their vocabularies and exposes them to sentence structures which are more complex than spoken communication.
"Also it's a lovely way for adults and children to spend time together as a bonding activity," Professor Snow said.
Children can benefit from understanding "print concepts" before beginning school.
"Learning about turning pages and even just understanding that black squiggles on the page are actually a representation of words."
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School age
School children should be encouraged to read over their summer holidays to avoid losing ground without being made to feel like it's a "chore" - even for five minutes a day.
"It should never become a battleground," Professor Snow said
"Because once it's a battleground, it's something that's emotionally, negatively loaded and there'll be lots of avoidance behaviours."
Sitting down with children, reading simple things, helping them decode text to sound out words, reinforcing the link between sounds and letters can go a long way to avoiding regression away from school.
Especially in younger children, whose reading skills can be "fragile", Professor long said, and who may not practice them for five or six weeks.
"Our brains aren't born for us to be natural readers," she said.
Outside of books, parents can also encourage their children to notice "environmental print" like street signs, names of businesses and even finding the letters in their names out in public.
"They're seeing reading as a purposeful, useful, enjoyable activity," Professor Snow said.
Seeing adults reading and leading by example can also be a big benefit for children used to modelling the behaviour of family members.
Tim Piccione
Tim covered courts and legal affairs for the Canberra Times.
