Shamil Akhmadullin
Psychologist, writer, author of 15 books and manuals on effective teaching children, including “Speed reading for children. How to teach a child to quickly read and understand what they read”, “Development of memory in children”. Founder of a network of centers for speed reading, development of memory and intelligence in children TurboRead.ru.
Why does a child need speed reading?
An important skill, mastery of which allows a child to succeed in school. This can be taught from about seven years of age, or more precisely, from the age when a child can read words at a speed of at least 30 words per minute.
Starting from the fifth grade, students have to process unusually large amounts of information. Most subjects, such as history, natural history, literature, etc., require quick reading, memorization and further retelling of the information received. Therefore, this skill is simply necessary for every student who intends to engage in intellectual work in the future.
How to learn to read quickly
Any complex skill, such as speed reading, consists of a number of smaller subskills. In order for a child to learn to read faster, he needs to master them.
Develop voluntary attention
An important component of the reading process is the child’s ability to concentrate long time. This sub-skill is trained through simple exercises such as a maze. The child only needs to find a way out of it with the help of his gaze.
Expand your field of view
For example, when reading the phrase “Masha ate porridge” sequentially, the image of a girl first appears in the child’s head. Then he imagines that she is eating, and then that she is eating porridge. It takes quite a lot of time to consistently compile this image.
It’s another matter if the child sees three words at the same time. The image of a girl eating porridge immediately appears in my head. This happens instantly and significantly speeds up the reading process.
In order for a child to see and perceive 2-3 words at the same time, it is necessary to expand his field of vision. There is a simple exercise that allows you to do this. It is called “wedge tables”. The child needs to concentrate on the central column and slowly look down, while saying the side numbers out loud. The goal is to reach the very bottom and see the numbers both to the right and to the left of the central column at the same time.
Reduce enunciation
Pronouncing text greatly slows down the reading process and negatively affects understanding and memorization. To prevent this, the child needs to compress his lips tightly and bite his tongue when reading. In this way, you can avoid articulation - the process of speaking the text while reading.
Eliminate recurrent eye movements
When reading, a child often returns to an already read part of the text, rereading entire paragraphs of the paragraph. This process, firstly, negatively affects reading comprehension, and secondly, reduces reading speed due to the fact that the child has to re-read the same thing several times.
The solution to this problem is simple: the child needs to run his finger along the line while reading. And if he does this quickly enough, then his reading speed will certainly increase, and without losing the quality of understanding.
Be able to highlight the main points in the text
One of the most important skills is to highlight the main thing in the text. It is strengthened by numerous training sessions. For example, you give your child a highlighter (marker) and ask him to mark important points in the text and then describe it in just 10 words. The child will choose words very carefully in order to fit the entire meaning of the text into them.
If you help your child master at least a few techniques, then positive results in the form of increased reading speed and, accordingly, increased academic performance will not be long in coming. Good luck in your education to you and your children!
All children read slowly. Reading speed depends on vocabulary child and how much time he devotes to learning. If your child reads too slowly, gets low grades in reading, and teachers ask you to tutor your child, then it’s time to learn speed reading at home. Of course, you can use the services of private teachers who will take care of your child for a “very modest amount”, but is it worth paying if you have the opportunity to study on your own? There is another advantage to this: you will be able to spend more time with your son or daughter.
What is speed reading?
If a child begins to fall behind in school in many subjects and he does not have enough time allotted in class to familiarize himself with the information provided in the textbook, it will be simply excellent to teach him speed reading. Of course, he will not become a genius who can completely read all the sheets in the time when his classmates read only the first page. Speed reading involves highlighting only the main thing and completely discarding unnecessary information, that is, that verbal garbage that does not affect the essence of what is being presented.
At what age can a child be taught speed reading?
There is no specific threshold here. The opinions of experts are divided, and some believe that it is necessary to teach speed reading to a child before the age of ten, while others argue with this opinion, arguing that it is impossible to learn such a technique before the age of fourteen.
Speed reading at home for children should begin at the age when the child can correctly comprehend the text, that is, not only can read, but also understand the essence. This age is different for everyone and largely depends on the teachers in kindergarten, teachers primary classes and parents. So, to understand that your baby is ready to learn speed reading, you should focus on four basics:
- The ability not only to distinguish letters, but also to construct syllables and words from them.
- Correct reading comprehension. That is, if a child read about a turtle, but says about a horse, then he is not ready, because he does not understand the meaning.
- The ability to select only the most important things from the entire text.
- Can retell reading material.
And in order for speed reading at home (we will describe exercises for mastering this skill) to bring greater effect, it is worth starting from the child’s activity. If he is not assiduous, then you should wait a little until the hyperactivity passes.
Mistakes made during training
How to learn speed reading at home without desire? There is only one answer, it’s completely impossible, so before starting the course, you should start from the child’s wishes. If he does not want to read at all (applies to preschool age), then you shouldn’t force him, as the desire to learn will completely disappear. So, if the child is determined to learn, then you can start.
The first thing every parent should remember is that you should not spend a lot of time on initial skills, and initial exercises should not last more than fifteen minutes. After this, you should let the child rest for about an hour and continue further. Why? It’s just that a small amount of material is absorbed quickly, but a child may remember absolutely nothing from a large volume.
Teach your child not letters, but sounds, that is, say not “EM”, but “M”. Otherwise, the child will read “emaema” instead of “mother.”
Learn to read right away in syllables, not letters, so the process will go faster. Stop all attempts by your baby to move his lips when reading to himself. Teachers assure that with such movement the child will take too long to comprehend the same word.
Speed reading at home for children: exercises for the brain
Of course, you can choose a technique yourself, but you can also use a proven method used by specialists. The main thing is to choose one training method, and not change it daily. So, let’s start mastering speed reading at home; we’ll start an effective course with brain training.
Find a pair
To develop your thinking speed, you can start this exercise from the very beginning. early age, the main thing is that the baby already knows the letters and knows how to work with syllables. You can buy, or you can draw cards yourself, on which the syllables will be written. Place them randomly on the table and encourage your child to make up words that he can find. For example: “vo-da”, “pa-pa”, “ba-ba”. With each exercise, complicate the task by adding one syllable to the words.
The cards should contain syllables of the words that the child has already seen; the main thing here is attention and memory.
Read in a minute
Take a book that you haven't read yet and invite your child to read a few lines. Record the time yourself and mark with a pencil the place where it stopped after a minute. Then ask to read the same passage again, and the number of words this time will be higher. Repeat the exercise every day.
Anagrams
Speed reading at home will become much more productive if you intensively train your visual memory. Write the incorrect sentence on a piece of paper and its corrected version on another. For example: “A frog was sitting in a green meadow” and “A frog was sitting in a green meadow.” Ask your child to quickly read the first version, and then just as quickly - the second. You will be surprised, but the baby will read the second version just as correctly as the first. This is visual memory.
You can do the same thing not with sentences, but with words, removing all vowels or several letters from the second option.
If you don’t succeed the first time, ask to find the mistakes made in a sentence or word, and continue training every day.
Visual perception
Do dictations with your child, just not the ones we are used to writing at school, but visual ones. Take a book with large letters and Blank sheet. Close all sentences except the first one from your child and give him a minute to study it. Then cover the entire text and let him write what he read on a piece of paper. Do the same with subsequent sentences.
Not with a stick, but with a carrot
If your child is unable to master speed reading at home, or the exercises are not being given as needed, then do not scold him under any circumstances. Try again and again, and be sure to praise for each success. The learner should only have good mood, positive attitude and positive emotions. If you scold him, he will be pinched internally, and, most likely, you will not have to wait for success, and the result will get worse.
Why does a child need speed reading?
Speed reading helps to quickly assimilate the material covered and eliminate all errors in reading. For example, if a child often “stammers,” confuses letters and syllables, or “swallows endings,” then this technique will help get rid of these issues.
By increasing the reading speed, the child will do better in school and will learn to separate the important from the unnecessary in the material covered.
Speed reading is great for developing memory. This is very important when learning, because every day children are given a huge amount of information, and developed memory will help you better absorb information, which means your grades will improve!
In addition to reading and the exercises provided above, the child should also practice speed speech. Prepare tongue twisters, proverbs and sayings for him. Speed reading at home will be more productive if the baby can speak quickly.
When reading, place the book on your lap, and while reading, move your finger along the line, the child should sit next to you and try to keep up with your movement. Slide your finger a little faster each time.
Speed reading for children at home: reviews
Many parents who independently tutored their child noticed that after completing the course, he showed better performance in school. Also, the children who completed this course became much more attentive.
There are those who write that the teacher was unable to teach speed reading because the child was uncomfortable in class. Children feel more relaxed with their parents.
There are parents who claim that they did not have the patience to teach their child on their own, and they decided that they did not really need it.
Modern children read poorly. This affects academic performance, the amount of material absorbed in class, and the speed of completing homework. Special speed reading exercises for children help solve the problem.
This unique technique. It is used in additional education schools and for home lessons with parents. What is its peculiarity and how to teach a child to read quickly, you will learn from our article.
From this article you will learn
At what age to start
There are several opinions about what age you should start teaching your child to read fluently and meaningfully.
In the beginning, experts advise.
According to the methods of Zaitsev, Doman, Montessori
The optimal period is considered to be from 3 to 7 years. The brain of a preschooler or first-grader remembers information quickly and firmly.
According to the Waldorf school
To firmly master the skill, children must grow to 10–12 years of age. This is due to the fact that students primary school They perceive information well when spoken at a normal rate of speech. By intermediate level, the ability to understand rapid streams of phonemes will improve. Reading technique is accelerated.
Having combined and analyzed both opinions, we can say for sure that it is not worth doing speed reading with first-graders and preschoolers persistently, under pressure. It is better to postpone this until a later period, when the child is mature. In elementary school use preparatory exercises for the development of memory, attention, articulation. These classes are useful for increasing the pace of text assimilation in the future.
Important! For early learning of the alphabet and syllables, use Zaitsev's cubes. They can be used from 6 months of age to introduce letters in a playful way.
Don't Make These Mistakes
Often, even capable children show poor readiness for reading due to methodological errors at the initial stage of learning syllabification. Self-study at home has an impact. Parents commit the following typical violations:
Tell the baby a letter, not a sound
Memorizing letters with overtones will lead to problems with reading. The child puts the syllables together like this: “pea-pea” instead of “pa-pa.” Short and clear sound pronunciation is the main condition for a fast reading pace.
Compose syllables from individual letters
Assignment: look, “b” and “o”, it turns out “bo” - methodologically incorrect. Teach children to immediately extend the vowel, without a pause between sounds: “bo-o-o-o.” Avoid spelling words. This is easier for children, but it takes time to analyze words into their component parts, and the meaning of phrases is lost.
They read texts for a long time
Conduct classes often, spend 5-7 minutes on one thing. It is better to read a short passage, a couple of sentences at a good speed, than to keep a student at the table for half an hour and force him to study. Short lessons are more effective. Don't forget to take breaks between exercises, about 2-3 hours.
Important! Consider the child’s mental characteristics: memory capacity, maximum attention span. If a teenager can concentrate and study for 15-20 minutes, it is not tiring, increase the duration of the lesson, but reduce the number of lessons per day to one or two.
From simple to complex
Speed reading training is based on the ability to perceive words as a whole, without dividing them into syllables. At the initial stage, use short words, consisting of two or three sounds. For example, “house”, “cat”. In the future, the baby will not read them or recognize them by letters. He will see this word in the text and immediately pronounce it. This is the meaning of the speed reading technique.
Preparation for the lesson: write the simplest words on a piece of paper, one at a time. Show them one after the other. Gradually increase the pace of changing words. Replace three-letter lexemes with words of four–five–seven letters after a solid assimilation of the material covered.
Words (“house”, “forest”) are replaced with complex ones (“tree”, “car”), then phrases and phrases. Compose sentences from vocabulary familiar to students. For example, he can read “who” and “house” separately. Suggest the phrase: “Who is in the house,” then add “lives” to this. You will get an offer.
You can start reading short texts when the student has mastered the ability to quickly read phrases and phrases. The pace of skill consolidation is different for all children. Do not rush if the student hesitates. Sometimes you need to return to simple, already covered material. This will increase interest in classes, reduce emotional stress, and set you up for success.
Important! For your first books, use bright literature, with pictures, and an interesting plot. A boring curriculum will not do.
Exercises for first graders
First grade is the most difficult psychologically, but very interesting period of life. During the first months at school, the child adapts to the new team, teacher, learns discipline and learns a lot of new things. It is not recommended to start fluent reading classes in the first half of the year. A first-grader simply does not have enough strength and emotions for the additional load at home.
If you feel that your child can and wants to become the first in reading technique among his classmates, then conduct lessons in the form of a game, without forcing him to sit for a long time in front of a book.
According to Professor I.T. Fedorenko, the author of his own method of teaching reading, the effectiveness of classes depends not on the amount of time spent on the lesson, but on its quality. Organize a clear schedule: do it two to three times a day simple exercises for 5-6 minutes. If a student is not in a good mood or is tired, postpone the lesson for a couple of hours, let him rest and get ready for work.
Important! Rest means a walk, active games, lunch or optional afternoon snack. Do not allow sitting near the TV or computer. Watching cartoons or playing online games on the Internet does not relieve the student psychologically.
If you decide to study with a first grader at home, without the help of professionals, use the following exercises:
Automated syllable reading
Download it online for free or make your own syllable table. For example, like this:
A first grader can become familiar with it while learning the alphabet.
The syllable table is used in every lesson. A first grader reads one to three lines in one lesson, gradually accelerating the pace. If training takes place in a group, first the lines are spoken in chorus, then individually.
Thanks to the syllabary table, the student easily understands the structure of words and learns to read words faster—automatically. Letter combinations are pronounced vertically and horizontally. During the introductory lesson, it is better to carefully practice one line with the same vowel: GA, YES, etc. Read the syllables slowly, without dividing them into sounds.
The benefits of a syllabic table are invaluable in speech therapy classes: the articulatory apparatus is trained, problem sounds are produced. Simultaneously with the improvement of speech, the child acquires spelling skills and neutralizes the tendency to dysorthography.
Choral reading
Used as a warm-up at the beginning of the lesson. Kids receive pieces of paper with text, preferably poetry, or sayings. The material is read in chorus at an average pace. Then each student pronounces the chosen tongue twister in a whisper or loudly. This trains articulation.
Set of tasks
Includes the following exercises:
- repeated reading for speed and time;
Children are offered a text. They read it on their own, quietly. The teacher times 1 minute. After stopping, children mark with a pencil the place where they stopped. Rest for 3–5 minutes. At this time, you can speak tongue twisters. Do articulatory gymnastics.
- reading at a good pace;
We take the familiar text in our hands and read it again for a minute. We compare the first and second results. More often than not, children read familiar passages faster and make fewer mistakes. Success creates a positive attitude. Let's move on to new material.
- getting to know a new text and reading it with expression;
For lessons, it is better to take texts that cannot be read fluently in a minute. Children should still have a piece of new material to practice speed reading. Read the unfamiliar part of the text in unison, quickly, but with expression.
Use a set of exercises in each lesson for 1-2 weeks.
Task "Tug"
Lexical material is read together with the parent. The adult chooses a pace so that it is not difficult or too easy for the child. Two or three sentences are read in chorus, the parent falls silent, continuing to read silently.
The kid doesn’t stop either, he reads to himself, trying to maintain the set speed. After one or two sentences, the adult begins to pronounce the text out loud. If the student does not slow down, he will read the same thing with his parent.
This exercise can be done in pairs. Children distribute roles. The strong student plays the role of a tug, and the weak one pulls up behind him. For the first lessons using this scheme, use a hint: move your finger over the text while silently reading. The student who follows the strong one will continue reading aloud, guided by the partner's prompt and his speed.
Jump-stop
The exercise is like a game. Develops attention, visual memory, orientation in the text.
The task is performed as follows. A child sits at a table with a text in front of him. At the command of an adult, he begins reading at a high speed rhythm. When the order to stop is given, the child closes his eyes and rests for 10–15 seconds. Then the teacher gives the command to read. A first grader needs to quickly find the stopping point in the text and continue reading. This easy way improve attention and visual memory.
Important! No need to help find the stopping place in the book. The reception is based on the principle of complete independence.
Half
Prepare didactic material. Write words of two or three syllables on an A4 sheet of paper, large. For example, “cat”, “spoon”, “girl”. Then cut the sheets so that the words can be folded from two halves. Shuffle the cards.
Offer to find and put together parts of words in a playful way at speed. But speed is not the most important thing here.
A properly conducted lesson develops imagination and memory.
For reference! An interesting method of teaching children to read from the cradle are Doman-Manichenko cards. These are pictures with words. They are shown to the child quickly, 2-3 seconds. Four to ten a day. After 5 days, the baby will name the words written on the card. The method is based on photo memory.
And here's another one interesting way, which is very simple and at the same time effective.
For children over 8 years old
Continue improving your reading speed in second grade. Eight-year-old children are independent and fast. They have outgrown the first grade activities, so offer them other fun exercises and games:
Looking for a word, line
The point of the game: the student finds all the words in the text that begin with the same letter. Searching for an entire phrase is a more complicated version of the task.
The exercise teaches attentiveness and develops left hemisphere brain - linguistic.
Insert letters
A second grader is presented with a text with missing letters. To read it and understand it, you need to think of endings and prefixes. This speeds up the pace of text comprehension in the future and helps to combine letters into whole words.
Fixing the error
The teacher reads the text, the children follow. The teacher deliberately makes a mistake in the ending of a word, root, etc. The student’s task is to correct the inaccuracy.
Read at speed
A second-grader independently takes measurements of reading technique, timing a minute, and keeps a diary of successes. Normally, by the second grade, children read at least 70 words, in the third - 100 words, in the fourth - 120.
Playing "Hidden Words"
The game is similar to reading anagrams. Children find words in the letter box. It looks like this:
Words can be selected on one topic or randomly. It is better for primary school students to provide a list of words that need to be found, leaving the task of isolating them on the field.
And one more option that you can print and use with your child.
Reading and counting
A second grader reads the text and counts the given sounds. For example, in the following poem, find out the number of “o” sounds.
The ball is bouncing along the path,
We can't catch the fast ball.
Develops multitasking skills and concentration.
Special exercises
Expanding the field of view
- Shulge table.
Necessary to increase the viewing angle. For second graders, use this version of the table:
The child looks for numbers in order with his eyes: from 1 to 25, for example, only black or only red. Record your time and limit it gradually. Searching for numbers in the table will increase the rate of speech, since the student will see more words with peripheral vision, that is, subconsciously read them in advance.
- Wedge tables.
The student needs to concentrate his gaze on the top numbers, gradually moving down. The numbers are spoken out loud. After several exercises, the student will see all the signs on the left and right at the same time. Methodological material from letters and numbers download on the Internet.
Regression Suppression
Returning your gaze to a line you’ve already read – regression – greatly slows down the pace of reading. To get rid of the unwanted effect, use the following training exercises:
- Indicate the reading direction.
Take a pointer or pencil and move it forward along the lines. The child intuitively follows the pointer without looking back.
- Close the text you read.
Prepare a special bookmark for the student. Have the second grader place it at the top of the text, gradually moving it down as they read. This way the read passage will be hidden from view. It is impossible to return to him.
- Check your speed constantly.
Measure your reading technique every day. To improve your results, you will always have to move forward without looking back.
Articulation suppression
- musical accompaniment;
We read to music without words, then with a song on. Pay attention to understanding the meaning of the text.
- "Bumblebee";
Ask students to hum while reading. This is a complex but effective method.
- rhythm;
Read and drum with your fingers and pencil on the table. Gradually increase the pace.
- lock;
Press your lips tightly and cover your mouth with your palm. We read to ourselves at the highest possible speed.
Important! After reading, ask the student questions about the text to check their reading comprehension.
Exercises to correct attention and concentration
- We make up words.
Take a long word. For example, "representation". Short words are made from it: “forest”, “shaft”, “toast”, “harm” and others.
- Finding differences.
In pairs: “horse - laziness”, “sleep - tone”, “kitty - fox”, differences are looked for. It is necessary to explain in detail how they are similar and different.
- Changing fonts.
Type texts on your PC in different fonts. Invite your child to read. It is necessary to gradually increase the speed of reading such texts so that attention is not focused on the size and type of font.
- We confuse words.
Write sentences on a piece of paper with the words rearranged in the wrong order: “the bull walks, sighs, sways.” The challenge is to find a place for each word.
- Let's note the main thing.
After reading the text, you need to underline it with a pencil controversial issues, highlight the main ideas.
- We include both hemispheres in the work.
We read with the left and right eyes alternately. Use this technique as homework and warm-up in class.
- Let's make riddles.
Trick questions and tricky riddles develop attention well.
- Let's name the colors.
Use a field like this:
Task: without reading the word, name the color with which the letters are painted.
The Development of Ancipation
This skill is well developed in adults. Guessing a word based on the meaning of the text, without seeing the end of the sentence, develops when performing the following tasks:
- text upside down;
First, the text is read in normal form, then turned 90° or upside down. It is being worked on.
- ruler;
Place a wide ruler on the sides of the text. The beginning and end of the sentence will not be visible. The child will have to guess what words are written there according to their meaning.
- halves;
Now use a ruler to close the upper halves of the letters on one line. The child is reading.
Memory training
- visual dictation;
The child is given a text to read. Then all phrases except the first sentence are hidden from view. 7-8 seconds are allotted for memorization, the child writes down from memory. In this way, the text is completely processed step by step.
- chain;
We read words on one topic. For example, forest - tree - pine cone - bear, etc. The student listens and reproduces the chain orally and in writing. You need to start with three to five words, gradually increasing to ten to twelve.
- word repair;
The child is given a text with missing letters. They need to be guessed while reading. The advantage of the method: the student keeps the meaning of the text in his head and expands his vocabulary.
Reading with an adult
Imposing reading speed – effective technique training. Use the following cooperative task systems:
- reading simultaneously with a parent;
The adult reads aloud, the child reads to himself. The speed is constantly changing. The student's task: not to get lost.
- relay race;
The adult and the child constantly change roles. First one reads, the other follows, then vice versa.
- tail;
The teacher reads the text first, the student picks up a little later, three or four words behind. Parallel playback out loud has a disadvantage: the voices interfere with each other. You need to read in a whisper or in a low voice.
Speed reading books for children
If you don’t know how to teach your child to read quickly, but want to do it yourself, pay attention to the following copyrighted materials:
The self-instruction manual is a collection of exciting tasks to increase the pace of reading, develop memory, and attention. The exercises are accompanied by detailed instructions.
The last pages of the book are a diary of successes. It contains the student’s data and the results of equipment checks. This motivates and makes education effective.
The manual is a collection of exercises for developing reading speed in children from 6 to 17 years old. The book includes a theoretical block. Here you can find answers to the questions: why does a child read poorly, how to instill a love for works of art and so on.
This is a set of manuals. It includes workbooks, success diaries, work programs, and cards. The material allows you to conduct classes on speed reading, memory and attention development. According to parents, after 10 days of working with this program, children’s reading speed increases by one and a half to two times.
With a little effort on the part of parents, children will learn to read quickly in a couple of months. Remember that speed reading classes will have a positive impact on the child’s intelligence, academic performance, and success in life.
IMPORTANT! *when copying article materials, be sure to indicate an active link to the original
One of serious problems A problem that parents of schoolchildren often encounter is poor reading technique. Slow and uncertain reading of text information leads to more time being spent on completing tasks, and this, in turn, leads to an overall decrease in academic performance.
How to teach a child to read quickly, while absorbing the necessary amount of information? How can we ensure that a child’s ability to read quickly does not turn into a mechanical, mindless repetition of words? After all, the text, especially the works fiction, it is necessary not only to read, but also to feel, only in this case can we talk about a full-fledged reading process.
One of the most popular ways to solve this problem today is to teach schoolchildren speed reading - a special technique that allows you to assimilate text information as efficiently as possible, spending a little time on it.
Speed reading training, when and how?
Learning classic speed reading techniques, based on the principle of complete suppression of internal pronunciation, should not begin before the age of 10-12 years. This is due to the fact that elementary school students better remember information whose transmission speed is identical average speed ordinary human speech.
However, even in the first grade, in the process of teaching a child to read, you can use some of the techniques offered by the speed reading method. These exercises will be extremely useful for developing speed reading skills in children.
Typical learning errors that lead to decreased reading speed
It should be noted that typical mistakes, from which reading technique significantly suffers, are often caused by the unprofessional actions of parents who independently teach their children to read.
Here are the most common points:
- The child remembers the name, not the pronunciation of the letter: “ME”, “BE”, “SHA”, etc. Therefore, instead of “MOM”, he will read “MEAAAMMEEA”, and this will significantly increase the time it takes to read the words. Teach children to pronounce the sounds “M”, “B”, “P”, and not the names of letters; this is a necessary condition for the child to learn to read fluently and without errors.
- , let's combine them correctly! We connect not the names of the letters “ME” and “A”, but the sounds - MMMaaaa, we learn to stretch them out smoothly. We make sure that children do not try to read by simply listing the letters: B, A, B, A, or P, A, P, A.
- Parents should not train speed reading skills in the following way: “you must read such and such a text (a task is given), and after that you will be free. It is better to conduct short reading lessons, but with greater frequency. In other words, read less, but read more often.
This is connected with the structure of visual memory: what flashes before the eyes is better remembered, and not what the child sees over a long period of time. Three small sessions during the day for 5-7 minutes will be much more effective than one session lasting 15-20 minutes. The interval between classes should be at least one to two hours.
Exercises to develop speed reading skills in first graders
Half words. The task that is set for the student is to separate fragment words to guess what the rest of it will be.
Write a few words (5-10) in large letters on paper sheets or cards. Cut the word cards in random order into halves. Shuffle the cards. Invite your child to correctly put words together from these elements.
In tow. This exercise involves reading together between an adult and a child. Select a page from the book with text. Mark the beginning of the text. Start reading to yourself, while using your finger to mark the lines you read. The child should read aloud in parallel, following your finger. Thus, willy-nilly, the young reader will be forced to adapt to the speed of the “tug,” that is, the reading adult.
This technique motivates the child well to read, because in the process of completing the task, the positive result becomes obvious.
Repeat reading the previous passage using the same time interval - one minute. Surely the second time the passage read will be a little larger than the one that was read initially. Repeat, emphasizing in every possible way the success achieved by the child after each advancement beyond the boundaries. readable text. This task can be repeated no more than three times in a row.
Jump-stop. The point of this exercise is to consolidate the skills of orienting in the text, making maximum use of visual memory. It is performed as follows.
The child puts his hands on his knees, and in front of him lies an open book with text. At the command of an adult: “Jump!” he begins to read the text. When the command “Stop, stop” is given, the reader should raise his head from the book, close his eyes, and rest for a few seconds. When the command “Jump!” is heard again, the child lowers his eyes and looks in the book for the place where he stopped. After the place is found, reading must be continued until the next command from the adult.
Would you like to learn more about speed reading techniques for children and have them at hand? Toolkit for activities with a child? — Pay attention to some of the popular books on speed reading. They are designed for teaching a child at home. They include effective proprietary techniques, exercises, instructions and training.
- Speed reading for children. How to read faster, remember and understand more. G. Abdulova
- Speed reading for children. Full version. A training book for parents of children 6-8, 9-12 and 13-17 years old. Sh Akhmadulin
- Teaching children speed reading. Complete learning system at home. Complex of educational programs. Sh. Akhmadulin
We fight unconscious pronunciation
The speed reading technique assumes the absence of conscious or uncontrolled articulation while reading, while most children, when reading, strive to sound out the text by pronouncing the words.
There is a fairly effective way to overcome this problem.
While reading, let the command “Lips!” the little reader will put the index finger of his left hand to his lips. After the command is completed, the child must go into “silent reading” mode. Then the adult gives the command “Aloud!”, following which the child must remove his finger from his lips and begin reading aloud. This technique will do an excellent job of teaching a student to read without pronunciation.
Enchanted sentences
You can make up a few sentences yourself, or you can use lines of poems or riddles already known to the child. The point is that the order of words in sentences changes and the student must “unenchant” the sentences by arranging the words in the correct order. This exercise is excellent for visual memory.
For example:
- Only cross the road in the right direction
- Carnation two rings in the middle two ends
- Gave Katya porridge with our semolina
- In the garden, cherry blossoms bloomed in our spring
- Friends came to Olya's birthday party
- The slippery dangerous and long path was
Restoring letters
This task develops visual memory, teaches you to analyze the composition of a word, teaches you to correlate the first and last letters words in its overall visual image.
Type a short passage of text, omitting the vowels in the words first. Invite the student to fill in the blanks, allotting a certain period of time for this (no more than 3-5 minutes for a text 2-3 sentences long). In the future, the task can be complicated: skip consonants, letter combinations, syllables.
Child - teacher
Very good exercise, the implementation of which children are usually very enthusiastic about. After all, they are given a unique opportunity to correct an adult!
An adult, reading a passage of text, makes a deliberate mistake in the pronunciation of one or more words. The child’s task is to interrupt reading and correct the adult’s mistakes.
Exercises for training visual and general memory
Reading technique suffers significantly when the child’s visual angle is insufficient to cover several words in a row. A technique using Schulte digital tables will help solve this problem.
| 10 | 4 | 28 | 19 | 14 |
| 20 | 24 | 18 | 1 | 5 |
| 13 | 8 | 30 | 25 | 11 |
| 2 | 22 | 15 | 27 | 17 |
| 26 | 6 | 12 | 3 | 21 |
| 16 | 23 | 9 | 29 | 7 |
The student must quickly find the numbers from 1 to 30 in the table, observing their order in the number series, showing and naming the number. This must be done within a certain period of time, the duration of which depends on the individual preparation of the child. In the future, the time during which the student finds the numbers should be reduced.
Training your memory
Another serious point that affects reading technique is that the student is not enough.
Surely many parents are faced with a situation where, having started to read a sentence of 6-8 words, the child stops at the third or fourth word, and further reading causes him difficulty. This is due to the fact that the child simply forgot what word the text began with, which means it is difficult for him to connect the words he has already read into a sentence. There is a pause that slows down the process.
In this case, special exercises will help - visual dictations, the writing of which stimulates the development of visual memory and has a direct impact on children’s ability to read fluently and without errors.
Conducting visual dictation
Type a short text - no more than six sentences. First, cover the text with a sheet of thick paper, then open the first sentence and give the child 8 seconds to read it and remember it. Cover the text and ask the student to write the sentence from memory. Do the same with the remaining sentences.
Do not confuse this task with writing expositions, which you are already familiar with from school! Here you need to accurately repeat the text that the student saw and remembered.
Celebrating the results!
Be sure to note positive results in your child’s mastery of reading techniques. You can create and hang above his desk a special sign demonstrating progress, this will motivate the child to further studies.
By the end of third grade, certain results must be achieved. The required level of reading technique at this age is at least 120 words per minute. Speed reading for children is one of the most effective ways learn to read quickly and consciously, without speaking out loud or articulating.
Webinar on the development of speed reading in children:
Hello, friends! What are you complaining about? Is your child's reading technique poor? Okay, we'll treat you. Keep the recipe. I am prescribing special exercises for you to develop your reading technique. Take regularly, several times a day. And the reading technique will firmly stand on its feet, and then leap forward.
Such magic exercises really exist. And if you try, you can find hundreds of different techniques, approaches, and methods on the Internet. To be honest, my eyes widen, and my brain begins to slowly boil. You don't know what to choose.
In order to protect my readers from such problems, I allowed myself to make the choice myself. The article included only the most interesting and tasty, in my opinion, exercises that will undoubtedly help raise reading technique to the level envisaged. I do not claim their authorship; they were developed by professionals: teachers, psychologists, professors.
But I claim to be the author of their names. They are too boring in the original version. Agree, “The Mystery of the Missing Sentence” sounds much more fun than “Visual Dictation by Professor I.T. Fedorenko." And it will certainly arouse greater interest among younger students.
Lesson plan:
List of exercises
And here he is! List of special reading exercises:
- "Half a watermelon"
- "Lost Letters"
- "Very sharp eye"
- "Sherlock"
- "Through the Looking Glass"
- "Mad Book"
- "The Birds Have Arrived"
- "Partisan"
- “Oh, once! Again!"
- "The Mystery of the Missing Proposal"
Exercise 1. “Half a watermelon”
Ask your child if, after seeing half a watermelon, he can imagine what a whole watermelon looks like? Of course, the answer will be yes. Now suggest conducting the same experiment with words.
Take a book and an opaque ruler. Cover one line in the book with a ruler so that only top part words Task: read the text, seeing only the tops of the letters.
Move the ruler higher and show only the bottom of the words. Let's read. This, by the way, is already more difficult.
For very young schoolchildren, you can offer another version of the game. Make cards with simple words. And then cut these cards into two halves along the words. You need to connect the two halves correctly.
How is it useful? Aimed at developing anticipation. Anticipation is foreknowledge. This ability of the brain, which gives us the opportunity, when reading, not to read absolutely all the words and letters. The brain already knows that they are there, so why waste time on them? Anticipation can be developed; it makes reading fluent, conscious, and easy.
Exercise 2. “Lost letters”
Another exercise to develop anticipation.
Letters and words sometimes get lost. But even without some letters and words we can read. Shall we try?
Write on paper, print or write with a marker on a special board the phrases that you see below.
Bookshelf.
New... T-shirt.
Big...spoon.
Red... cat.
Here's another phrase:
Bobik ate all the cutlets
He doesn't share......
And here are some more:
Ok-ok-ok - we will build.......
Yuk-yuk-yuk - ours is broken......
Exercise 3. “Eye is a diamond”
Look at the picture and draw the same rectangle. Place numbers from 1 to 30 in the cells, in random order, but not one after another. The numbers should be randomly scattered across the cells.
The schoolboy looks carefully at the picture with the sign.
The counting is even, not too fast, but not too slow.
Child's task:
- on the count of one, find and point to one with your finger;
- on the count of two - deuce;
- three - three, etc.
If a child hesitates with some number, then the score is not waiting for him, he needs to catch up, look for it faster. For kids, you can draw smaller signs, for example, 3X3 or 4X4.
What is the point of the exercise? It is aimed at increasing the viewing angle. In order to “catch” with your eyes when reading not one letter, not one word, but several words at once, or an entire line. The wider we look, the faster we will read.
One table can be used two or three times, then the arrangement of the numbers needs to be changed.
Exercise 4. “Sherlock”
Place the words on a piece of paper. Very different, not very long. In no particular order. Kind of scatter them across the paper. Name one of the words and ask the child to find it. Words could be, for example:
frame, jelly, spoon, chair, horse, gold, soap, pen, mouse, mouth, knee, dog, summer, lake, cancer
Each next word will be found faster than the previous one. Since, while trying to find one word, the student will read others along the way and remember where they are. And that's all we need.
Thanks to Sherlock, the viewing angle increases. And reading speed.
Exercise 5. “Through the Looking Glass”
We found ourselves in a world through the looking glass, and everything is the other way around. And they even read everything not from left to right, but from right to left. Shall we try?
So, we read the lines in the books from left to right. Let me clarify, there is no need to turn the words themselves around. There is no need to read “tomegeb” instead of “behemoth”.
With this method of reading, the meaning of the text is lost. Therefore, all attention is switched to the correct and clear pronunciation of words.
Exercise 6. “Mad Book”
Tell your child that sometimes some ill-mannered books behave rather strangely. They suddenly take it and turn upside down.
The child reads aloud. After a while you clap your hands. The child's task is to turn the book upside down and continue reading from where he left off. At first, you can make marks with a pencil so as not to get too lost in the text. And so on several times. Two, three full turns of the book.
If your student is still only in 1st grade, or maybe in 2nd grade, but reading is still very difficult, then you can read not a book with texts, but short simple words, printed one after another on paper.
What will it give? Eye coordination and the ability to navigate through text will develop. A letter standard will be formed. And the processing of information by the brain will improve.
Exercise 7. “The birds have arrived”
Show your child the phrase “the birds have flown.” And ask to read it:
- calmly;
- joyfully;
- loud;
- quiet;
- sad;
- with irritation;
- with fear;
- mockingly;
- with anger.
Exercise 8. “Partisan”
The student reads the text (or individual words, if he is still very young) aloud. You say: "Partisan". At this signal, the student takes a pencil into his mouth (presses it between his lips and teeth) and continues to read to himself. At the signal “The partisan has escaped,” we take out the pencil and read aloud again. And so on several times.
Why is this? To eliminate pronouncing words while reading silently. Pronunciation is the enemy of fast reading. So you need to remove it. And when a pencil is clamped in your teeth, you won’t be able to speak.
Exercise 9. “Oh, once! Again!"
For this exercise we will need a stopwatch and a text to read.
Read for 1 minute. We pay attention to reading speed, but you can forget about expressiveness for now. Ready? Go!
The minute is up. Stop! Let's make a mark where we left off.
Let's rest a little and read the same text again. Go! In a minute we make a notch. Wow! Already more.
What will happen the third time? And the third time will be even better!
What does this give us? Increase reading speed. And the child's motivation. He will see for himself that he is capable of more.
Exercise 10. “The Mystery of the Missing Sentence”
In order to solve the mystery, we will need cards with sentences (look at the picture). There are 6 cards in total. Each has one sentence. The font is large and easy to read.
Let's prepare a notebook and pen. Let's start the exercise:
- Show your child the first card.
- The student reads the sentence and tries to remember it.
- After 6 - 8 seconds, remove the card.
- The child writes the sentence in a notebook from memory.
- Show the child the second card, etc. until the sixth sentence.
What's the point here?
As I already said, this is not actually a game, but visual dictations developed by Professor I.T. Fedorenko. There are 18 such dictations in total. Each has six sentences.
In our example, I used the very first dictation. What is their feature? Please count the letters in the first sentence of the dictation. There are 8 of them.
In the second - 9,
in the third - 10,
in the fourth and fifth 11,
It's already 12 in the sixth.
That is, the number of letters in sentences gradually increases and eventually reaches 46 in the last sentence of dictation 18.
You can easily find the texts of Fedorenko’s dictations on the Internet. One dictation can be used twice, three times, if the child cannot do everything correctly. By the fourth time everything usually works out.
It is convenient to use Microsoft Power Point to complete this exercise. The one in which presentations are usually made.
By playing "The Mystery of the Missing Proposal" you develop RAM. When such memory is poorly developed, a child, having read the sixth word in a sentence, will not be able to remember the first. Practice visual dictations every day and you won’t have such problems.
How to practice?
There is no need to try to do all the exercises at once. Only the game “The Mystery of Disappearing Sentences” requires your daily attention, and to it add a couple or three more exercises of your choice. Change them, alternate them so as not to get bored. Don't forget to evaluate your progress from time to time.
You need to exercise regularly, every day, a little. This is the main rule! WITH detailed plan workouts can be found.
Don't be lazy, train, and you will be happy and get an A in your diary!
Friends, maybe you also know some interesting way to improve your reading technique? I hope you will share it in the comments. Thank you very much in advance!
And see you again on the blog pages!
Evgenia Klimkovich.