Tips for Parents

These tips may help boost your child’s reading skills and make reading fun:

• Get a library card for your child. Children love seeing their names on the cards and choosing books they either want to read or have read to them. Many libraries offer story hours and computers for public use. Librarians also can help your child with everything from locating books to tackling research.
• Read with your child for at least 20 minutes every night from a broad selection of children’s books, including fairy tales, songs, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
• For beginning readers, point at each word as you read it. This helps children learn that we read from left to right. It also helps children understand that the word they say is the word they see.
• Let your beginning reader read to you.
• Talk with your child about the pictures and what is happening in the story to help develop comprehension skills.
• Read your child’s favorite book over and over again. Children love hearing certain stories many times, and the repetition helps them connect the sounds they hear with the written words.
• Invite your younger children to join in when you read stories that have rhyming words and lines that repeat.
• Point out new words and explain what they mean.

Source: Adapted from Summer Reading Achievers brochure. Published by the U.S. Department of Education.

For more information, contact: Information Resource Center, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave., S.W., Washington, DC 20202, (800) USA-LEARN (1-800-872-5327).

Read Your School's Report Card

Michigan schools are performing and improving. The Michigan School Report Cards provide information about the performance of schools in Michigan. You can search or browse for a school to view its report card. The report card provides a composite grade for the school. Then you can view details on each report card to understand the basis of each grade. Visit http://ayp.mde.state.mi.us/ayp to learn about how your school is doing. This site also provides a Guide to Reading School Report Cards, a glossary, and the Adequate Yearly Progress/Education YES! State Status Report.

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