How can I encourage my child to read?

Very often the challenge isn’t just in finding something that they are willing to read,
but in the actual act of reading itself.

I was talking about reading the other day with a mum. Very often
the challenge isn’t just in finding something that they are willing to read,
but in the actual act of reading itself.

A lot of children struggle with reading. Especially reading
out loud. All enjoyment goes out of the story as all you can think about is the
effort of what is to come. Sounding our words, recognising letters, remembering
what the story was about, keeping your place in the text. And people regard
this as fun, how!!

Since the beginning of tutoring, we’ve used the ‘dotty board
game’. We have a page of A4 paper and around the edge/ across the middle we
have 6 yellow dots, 6 blue dots, 6 green dots. You can be green, I’ll be
yellow.

You roll the dice and that determines how far you can move.
You can go in any direction, but you can’t change direction halfway through a
go. If your counter lands on a green, you will need to read a sentence,
paragraph, page, or whatever we deem to be appropriate. If anyone lands on a
yellow, I’ll have to read.

If someone lands on a blue, they roll the dice again and
there is a selection of forfeits which are determined by the number on the
dice:

1)     have another go

2)     go forward 3 spaces

3)     go back 6 spaces

4)     miss a turn

5)     other person reads

6)     you need to read again

My idea when I came up with this was to take the onus off one
person having to put in all the effort as I knew as a child how I used to hate
reading out. In my head, no problem. As soon as I started reading out loud, I
became a bumbling buffoon. I also felt that if you never knew when your turn
was coming it would mean in you had less of an opportunity to sit there in
dread because you would also become too caught up in the game.

We’ve adapted the game and use it for answering other
questions as well, but this was the original purpose. You may decide to change
the dots for images of each player, or if you are a particular fan of dogs have
a different breed instead of different colours. If you’re following the
football, you may choose different teams which are playing.