Website Articles: A Great Reading Resource for Kids

It is a challenge for parents to ensure their children are provided with lots of interesting and quality texts to read and explore. Sure, there are the favourite books, the ones that get read so often the spine starts to fall apart. But there are also the untouched books, or the ones read only once, and never opened again. Finding a constant source of reading material for children to explore is important. It promotes a child's interest in reading and supports the development of literacy skills. Expanding the horizons of a child, with access to a wide variety of texts, provides choices that empower the reader. Fortunately, with technology today, there are so many great websites for relevant and interesting reading material, written specifically for kids. Endless reading opportunities await children at the touch of a few buttons. Some very good websites that offer quality reading materials are listed below. These websites are written to deliver current news events and interest articles in a non-fiction format. Exploring non-fiction texts not only supports the child with building schema for new facts and information, it also helps to clarify an understanding for various text types and their features. This Information aids in the development of reading comprehension.

It is important to set the stage for a reading session with your child. When exploring a text together there are some tips that can be used, to make the session a positive experience:

Before the Reading Read the title and make predictions. Activate prior knowledge by discussing what the child already knows about the topic. Determine whether the text is fiction or non-fiction and ask them to explain how they know. Discuss the author’s purpose for creating the article. Brainstorm some words that might appear in the text.

During the Reading Take time to stop and think about the content of the article at different points in the reading. Ask questions that engage the reader in the topic of the article. Help them to make connections to their own knowledge and experiences. Practice the strategy of visualizing by encouraging the child to create a picture in their mind at least once during the reading. Do not linger too long trying to sound out a difficult word. Give it a try, but then go back and read the sentence again to draw on meaning and structure, to draw on reading cues. Continue to make predictions at different points in the reading and share questions that arise.

After the Reading Reflect on the article and the responses it evokes in the reader. Discuss your child’s opinion of the text and their reasons for it. Synthesize the information and determine the important points in the article. Asked your child whether they liked the text and whether they think it was useful. Highlight new knowledge and use it to make connections to the world around them. Review new words and information learned in the reading.

Take a genuine interest in reading with your child and makie the conversation authentic. This is easier to do when the focus remains on the context of the text, rather than the process of decoding words. If the text becomes too difficult jump in and take over for a while. It is helpful for your child to see you model reading. As you review different articles keep them stored in a duotang or e-file. It is very beneficial to go back to a text, that a child has already seen, for the purpose of reading it again for fluency. Familiar texts will also become a reference for new words and literacy examples, that a child can reference. There are some wonderful kids websites available that have lots of reading choices to keep both parents and children engaged. I mentioned some above but simply searching Kids Articles will lead you to an endless world of reading opportunities.