Summer Reading Failure? Here’s How to Get Your Struggling Reader Ready for Back-to-School
Did you have great intentions for summer reading, but have some trouble with the follow-through? If so, you’re not alone. It’s important for kids to experience rest, fun, and family connection through the summer months, but as the school year approaches quickly you may be starting to wonder what you can do to get ready for the back-to-school season. Especially if your child struggles with reading, thinking ahead and preparing them for what’s coming is critical for a smooth transition!
Kids who struggle with reading often face low confidence and self-esteem heading into the school year. After all, so much of learning relies on this skill to decode words and derive meaning! If your child continues to struggle year after year without making gains, it may be time for some more targeted intervention. But in the meantime, here are some things you can do to help your struggling reader get back-to-school ready:
Have a Family Game Night Regularly
Using this low-pressure time to activate your brain and practice key skills can help your child get ready for the new school year without it feeling like “homework.” These are vital times of connection, strategy, competition, and skill practice that you can’t get anywhere else!
If your child struggles with reading, they may be resistant to playing word games, but the reality is that the practice they offer is invaluable to making them more confident readers and spellers!
Try Not to Cram or Force Reading
Summer is almost over; take a breath. Now is not the time to fit a whole summer’s worth of reading into a couple weeks. This will just burn your child out more ahead of the school year and make the back-to-school transition more stressful than it needs to be.
Instead, set some mini goals in the time you have left. Start reading—but don’t cram ahead of the back-to-school season. Maybe it’s one book per week, or just even one book before school starts.
The goal of this time should be to have fun with reading and find books that are enjoyable for your family, not just doing it to check off a list.
Practice More Than You Push
The basics are essential before you move forward to harder texts, even if that means reading some below-grade-level books for the rest of the summer.
The school year will provide plenty of challenges for your struggling reader. Use this time to read books they enjoy and build up their confidence!
Have a Back-to-School Crisis Plan
What are you going to do if reading is still a struggle this year? It’s a question you may not like thinking about right now, but it’s a valid one.
Are you content to let your child struggle through another year to see if it will “click”? Or do you have a plan to take active steps to make reading and learning easier?
We understand the trial-and-error methods many schools have to use to target weak reading skills. And for some kids, it is enough.
But if your child continues to struggle year after year it may be time to take a deeper look (or ward off potential problems before they start!) Our cognitive skills assessment takes a deeper look into the way learning happens in your child’s brain. From the results, we can come up with a customized plan to strengthen the areas that are causing them to struggle so much so they can experience greater success in school!
Our clients report changes in behavior, attention, confidence, reading ability, and so much more as a result of LearningRx brain training—and the results show it, too! Our students have gained an average of 3.5 years in reading skills as a result of their training.
While all results may vary and we can’t guarantee these outcomes in every situation, we’d love to talk about how we can help make learning, reading, remembering, and focusing easier for your child in the school year ahead!
Give us a call today to learn more.
