“Today a learner and tomorrow a leader.”
Studies show that early literacy development in children is essential for improving academic performance.
Children in Singapore learn their language rapidly as they move from infancy to nursery. Developing healthy reading habits and fostering a love of reading is crucial to develop a competitive reader.
Besides choosing age-appropriate books and reading along with your kid, children can gain a lot from a systematic reading programme from Singapore that offers the greatest reading framework with progressive outcomes at each level.
Here are some fundamental guidelines you must adhere to choose the best reading programme in Singapore, which will aid you in narrowing down your selection of an appropriate reading programme for your child.
Guidelines for Best Reading Programme in Singapore
As a parent, how do you identify the best reading programmes for kids in Singapore? Well! Here are some basic questions to consider. Have a look!
1. Decide how old you should start your child on a reading programme.
The development of a child’s literacy relies greatly on their early years. Most Singaporean nursery school students start to recognise the alphabet’s letters and sounds by the age of three, preparing them for reading.
Beginning a reading programme for children at this age will spark their interest in books as they explore how the words and sentences frame together in their favourite storybook.
Reading will become second nature to your child if you instil in them healthy reading habits and the fundamentals of reading at an early age.
2. Is a reading programme for children in the nursery class in Singapore necessary?
While you may introduce reading to young children at nursery school, they may need more opportunities to develop the reading abilities they will require completely.
Along with nursery school, you must enrol your children in some of the best reading programmes, which help students improve their reading fluency, vocabulary, and phonics skills. These will inspire children to improve as readers as they reach each milestone in their reading journey.
3. Will a reading programme for children lessen the fun of reading?
Children gain most of their knowledge when they are having fun. Beginner readers learn fundamental abilities like reading, speaking, pre-writing, and listening. Check for reading programmes in Singapore that provide education and knowledge to children while having fun with multi-sensory activities like rhymes, songs, and poems.
Children will learn to love reading as they get the confidence to read on their own by engaging in enjoyable lessons.
4. How can parents be involved in the reading programme?
Reading will be less intimidating and more pleasant for your eager learners if you actively participate in their educational path.
Look for reading programmes that conduct regular workshops for parents to understand the best methods for encouraging their kids’ reading at home. Additionally, feedback will be sent to parents weekly so they may monitor the development of their children engaged in the programme.
5. Determine the appropriate reading curriculum for your child’s grade.
With many available options, selecting a good reading programme in Singapore for your child might take time and effort.
Discover your child’s learning preferences and any reading gaps before anything else. Along with enhancing your child’s reading abilities, you should ensure that they are instilled with the proper learning mentality rather than being drilled.
Thus, to determine your child’s level of reading ability, you can start by using the basic literacy assessment conducted in various reading programmes in Singapore. It gives the most complete and accurate measures of a child’s reading ability. You will receive a detailed profile of your child’s literacy skills and areas for development.
6. What is the best reading program for your children?
It does not necessarily mean that your child is behind in development if they need help reading or adding numbers. Parents can assist their children in the following ways:
You should simplify the material if your child is struggling to understand it. Prioritize the subject and make sure your child fully understands it.
Every child learns differently. The learning programme should be adapted to the needs of children with specific difficulties, such as autism or dyslexia.
A child’s reading skills will improve if they follow a structured learning programme. Repetition is good for kids. As a result, it’s critical to make learning a daily activity.
Features of A Good Reading Programme
Below are some common features that must exhibit in a good reading programme. These can be:
Optimising Auditory Skills
Auditory skills are a child’s capacity to extract sounds from words, which is essential for hearing and comprehension. Nowadays, most teachers include a musical curriculum that can greatly aid auditory learners in connecting songs and musical notation with reading.
Increasing Visual Processing Capabilities
It is the potential to visualise, control, arrange, and think using visuals. It is advantageous to educate children on how letters fit together to make words through a hands-on reading curriculum that considers different learning styles. A good reading programme must train children to make hand gestures corresponding to each letter of the alphabet.
Practising Concentration and Attention
It is the potential to preserve, separate, and choose information. Reading programmes should include these abilities since they help kids internalise and recall what they learn. The child learns new information and comprehends it. This skill is intricate and needs time and repetition to develop completely in a child.
Improves Fluency
Another important feature that a reading programme must emphasise is fluency, the capacity to read aloud quickly, clearly, and accurately. It entails your child with strong phonics commands and the ability to recognise words at sight. Thus, the more a student reads, the more proficient they become.
Conclusion
Every child is different and has different needs. Therefore, before choosing a reading programme in Singapore, you must conduct specialised assessments to evaluate your child’s literacy abilities from a developmental standpoint. It helps to determine the child’s linguistic needs.
These assessments evaluate children’s five main learning components: cognitive, language, writing, reading, and numeracy. It determines the child’s level of developmental literacy. Also, sometimes you cannot fully understand how a programme operates until you use it, so the importance of a free trial session should not be overstated. Hopefully, these guidelines will assist you in determining your child’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to better adapt the reading programme in Singapore to meet your child’s needs.
