If your child is in the first standard, he should be able to read this paragraph with relative ease. Is he able to do that or does he torture his way through the words? Most parents are eager to hear a child's first words and are full of concern when their child doesn't start speaking, but not many pay attention to whether their child is able to read well. Just the fact that you have enrolled your child in a play school or school is not sufficient to ensure that he starts to read with ease. A majority of elementary school children are still unable to read short simple words without a struggle. The good news is that you as a parent can make an enormous difference to your child's reading skills. Until the age of three you are busy teaching your child how to talk, and helping him build his vocabulary. Once he's turned three, you can start concentrating on getting him to learn to read. Chalk out a time every day, when you can sit with your child and you both can read together. While reading is visual, it has more to do with the ears than with the eyes - at least, initially. So make sure you read aloud, clearly and slowly from the book while pointing out the words. Even if you child doesn't pay much attention to the book, when he comes across the word in his school text book, he will immediately recognize it.
Kids are never too young to learn it, and once they do, introduce them to the written alphabets. Get your child an alphabet list without any images, and teach her the alphabets. Then help her recall them. As there are no images, she has to rely totally on memory. Once your child can identify all the alphabets, introduce him to the chart with pictures. This helps with phonetics.When you are teaching your child to speak, make sure you pronounce the words properly, clearly and carefully, or your child will pick up the wrong pronunciations. Review what you've taught your child everyday. Teach your child to rhyme words on his own. You can start by rhyming body parts for eg. Eye-bye, leg-beg, nose-rose. In this manner not only will your child learn the names of the various body parts, but he will also learn to rhyme words.

Learning to read begins very early in life, alongside learning to talk. Babies are fascinated by bright colourful books. If an adult talks about the pictures and reads the words, this helps to develop language skills. The young child also begins to understand that the content of a book never changes. Later on, after much sharing of books, children begin to play read and turn the pages of a favourite story while chanting parts of it aloud.During this phase your child is remembering word patterns and learning about the language of books. This is a very important part of learning to read. There is no need for actual teaching at this stage: your child's interest in and enjoyment of written language is supported through the regular sharing of books.

You may have learnt to read through being taught words on cards. Then, when your teacher decided you knew enough, you were given a book to practise. Even twenty years ago, books for young children often had poor illustrations and very simple language. Some teachers even covered pictures up because they felt looking at pictures was a form of cheating.Nowadays we recognise that quality texts, where the language sounds good and the illustrations are often stunning, play an important part in developing children's reading skills. Often a whole class is taught to read together through the use of a big book so everyone can see and join in as the teacher points out letters, words and sentences.
I recruited the participants from multiple adult literacy practitioner-oriented electronic discussion lists. Subscribers were asked to nominate current or past students who had entered their programs reading below the 4th grade level equivalency and who had made very significant progress in their reading. Rather than try to quantify their progress, we focused on the quantity and quality of literacy practices. Therefore, we operationalized our definition of a learner who has made significant progress as a reader who has attained the competence and desire to read comfortably and as a normal part of his or her day-to-day life.