Hello again, today’s super-strategy is all about success.
How do YOU feel if you fail and fail and fail at something. Great? Probably not. Now, think about how your child feels about reading… Great? Probably not!
Now think about how you feel when you CAN do something. It feels fantastic, right?
Your job is to ensure that your child feels successful after reading time. Every time. Let me say that again. After reading, your child should feel GREAT, EVERY time. You need to make reading a fun activity for your child — because no-one wants to do things they suck at.
How do you make that happen?
The first step is to make sure your expectations are realistic. You know where you want your child to BE, but the most they can do is move on one step from where they ARE now. Make sure your expectations are reasonable.
The next step is to make sure that the reading task or activity suits your reader’s current skill level.
A simple metric to use is 80%. On any task, whether that is reading aloud, answering questions, using an app, or doing any sort of reading activity, your child should be operating at 80% success. 4 out of every 5 attempts should be successful.
If your child is doing worse, then the task is too hard. Ease it up. If your child is always scoring 100%, then you are ready for the next level.
One of the (many) reasons that apps are great for reading-improvement is that skill level can be tracked by the app. All of our Happy Frog apps monitor your child’s progress and levels unlock when your child is ready (scores 80% or above). Our levels are carefully graded so that skills build incrementally with tons of success along the way.
So, what are you going to do today to ENSURE your child feels successful?
