4 Top Tips To Raising Readers
- Lydia - Founder of LS Tuition
- 13 hours ago
- 6 min read
By LS Tuition
Supporting Your Child Towards a Lifelong Love of Reading
Want to help your child learn to read?
These tried and tested tips from LS Tuition, a holistic, child-led private tutor in Edinburgh, will help your child develop a lifelong love of literacy and learning.
As a parent, you want the best for your child – academically, socially and emotionally. Learning to read is an important journey for any child, but it’s about more than simply decoding letters. As a private tutor of primary-aged children in Edinburgh, LS Tuition supports young people in their learning journey towards being confident, curious readers. Tutors and schools can play a big role in this, but it’s at home where parents and carers can really help their child develop a lifelong love of reading.
Even if you don’t manage to complete homework set by school, the main thing you can do to support your child’s education at primary level is, we believe, reading with them. The benefits of reading are unmatched in terms of comprehension, vocabulary, sentence structure and many other skills which will serve them well into adulthood.
Helping a child learn how to read and supporting them to develop a lifelong love of learning doesn’t need to be complicated or boring, with rigid phonics rules and repetitive reading schemes. By tuning into your child’s needs and interests, nurturing their curiosity, and supporting their holistic development – like we do at LS Tuition – you can use everyday moments to inspire learning and help build their confidence with reading.
Spark Their Curiosity
As with every learning experience, children are far more likely to engage with something that interests them. That means book choices and opportunities for reading should centre around your child’s interests and whatever they’re curious about. Scan your shelves at home or head to the library to choose books that focus on specific favourite themes, like dinosaurs, art, transportation, space, or flowers.
Match their passions with the right stories and they’ll be enthusiastic about reading, even if it means you end up reading the same book every night for a month! Giving your child a choice over what to read is empowering, but the repetition is reassuring for them too, enabling them to drill down on what they’re reading and focus on understanding more difficult words or sounds.
And if your child isn’t into books, start with anything that reflects their interests. Menus, catalogues, seed packets, comics, road signs – all can provide rich and varied opportunities for identifying letters, sounds and words. By creating word lists, visiting libraries and museums, working on themed craft projects and making the most of opportunities to practise reading, your child will learn that education isn’t just something they do at school; there are learning opportunities all around.
Using their interests as a springboard is a child-led approach – like we use at LS Tuition – and helps them develop intrinsic motivation: they’re learning because they’re interested, not because they have to. This complements the holistic education style we use as a private tutoring service in Edinburgh.
“Lydia has been a fantastic tutor for our five-year-old daughter who had anxiety with her Maths and English after lockdown. It affected her confidence in the classroom. Lydia assessed our daughter’s learning challenges and provided a personalised structured schedule of topics to follow. In a matter of weeks, our daughter moved up her reading level stage at school. With Lydia’s professional, well-prepared teaching strategies, our daughter’s anxieties became less obvious. She is now much more confident and happier in class.”
Parent testimonial
Talk, Listen, Connect
Language and conversation are cornerstones of literacy. The more you chat with your child, the better their vocabulary will become. Ask them open-ended questions, describe your day, talk about something you’ve seen or read, discuss how they’re feeling, and share experiences. Even if they don’t understand your vocabulary, by using ‘big words’ you’re opening them up to ask questions about language and word meanings, as well as encouraging critical and independent thinking.
At LS Tuition, we’ve designed a comprehension system called LIE, which stands for literal, inferential and evaluative questioning. This focuses on comprehension and analytical thinking and, looking ahead, our approach equips children with the beginnings of understanding how to answer exam questions and builds in much-needed analytical skills as early as possible.
As a parent, you can support your child’s reading and future study skills by adapting the LS Tuition LIE approach for yourselves. When you’re reading together, chat about the story – what do they think happens next, why did this character do that action, does the story remind them of anything that’s happened in their life?
Conversation helps build the foundations of vocabulary and comprehension, laying the groundwork for expressive writing and reading. By talking together and really listening to your child, you help to deepen your bond, strengthening your relationship and supporting their development on a holistic level.
“Lydia has been a phenomenal help with our seven-year-old who has a lot of anxiety around his skills and capability with reading and writing. My son is now voluntarily wanting to write sentences and is much happier at school and home when doing homework. Thank you! We are counting down until we can come back to you.”
Parent testimonial
Immerse Your Child in Reading
When thinking about teaching your child to read, it can be tempting to reach for flashcards or focus on phonics. But children learn best through child-led, playful activities. Create a reading-friendly environment at home with a comfy seating area (cushions in a corner work brilliantly), along with books, magazines, and even wall art to inspire your children with words. And make sure your child sees you reading too. Whether it’s a newspaper, novel or text message, leading by example and showing them that reading can be a pleasure and not a chore will go far in encouraging their interest in learning to read.
Before your child can read a single letter, reading to them helps support their language development and literacy skills. By reading to them, you’re boosting their vocabulary, giving them listening skills, and developing their comprehension; all vital elements of their journey towards learning how to read. Listening to audiobooks or acting out scenes from stories they love are other helpful ways of fostering a love of reading in your children from a young age.
For younger learners, the focus should be purely on fun. Learning about letters and phonics can blend beautifully with sensory play, for example – they can write letter pairs in sand, use movement to explore sounds, clap out phonemes or syllables of words, or create letter shapes from Play-Doh or natural materials.
Of course, bedtime stories are a wonderful ritual for many families, but story time doesn’t just have to take place at night. Read with your children when it suits you. Depending on their age, this could mean looking at news headlines over breakfast, reading the ingredients from a recipe book while you prepare meals, or enjoying their favourite book on repeat while you snuggle together before bed. You might like to act out voices, share ideas about the story you’re reading, or answer any questions they have while you read to them – helping to build your connection and showing your child how enjoyable and rewarding reading can be.
Mastering Reading Skills
Learning to read is a marathon, not a sprint. Developing the skills needed to progress to reading chapter books, for example, takes lots of effort, focus and time. But once those skills are mastered, your child can enjoy the lifelong gift of reading.
By creating a nurturing, reading-friendly environment at home, you can help develop your child’s love of literature. And if you feel they’d benefit from some extra support before the new academic year, you want to keep their love of learning alive over the long summer break, or you’d like your child to experience a safe space to explore learning on their own terms, why not consider LS Tuition Edinburgh Summer School?
With enriching learning programmes tailored to each individual child, LS Tuition offers educational support to help bridge this period of transition. Held at our purpose-built classroom in EH16, LS Tuition Summer School offers week-long blocks for children from P1 to P7.
“Our daughter attended the LS Tuition Summer School and loved it. The week had a good mix of learning and play, along with a guest appearance and reading from a children’s author. As it was Monday to Friday and similar to school hours, it really helped us working parents in the summer break. Lydia and her team are always hugely positive and helpful, take great care of the kids and make learning much more enjoyable.”
Parent testimonial
LS Tuition Summer School
Each day at LS Tuition Summer School includes child-led activities that focus on literacy, numeracy and developmental activities to boost your child’s confidence and help them learn new skills, make new friends and have fun!
There are limited spaces for Summer School; sign-ups close on Thursday 29 May 2025.
Register your interest and ensure your child doesn’t miss out.
Want to learn more about our tutoring sessions or LS Tuition Summer School?
We’d love to hear from you. Learn more and register your interest here to reserve your child’s place in our Edinburgh Summer School, or find the right private tuition support for your child.