How to Help Boys and Teens with Improving their Reading
As we head into the second part of the year, you may have found that your son’s mid-semester report was less than stellar? Or perhaps their learning needs aren’t being met? I receive messages every week from concerned parents about their son’s literacy. If they are neurodiverse, know that we can help. Our latest internal milestone tracking has shown that our students have shown a 15% increase in their literacy after only one term. I’ve been thrilled to see that boys have made up a majority of this improvement!
Read on to see what advice resonated with parents like you and how we can assist with your son’s literacy going forward into 2023 and beyond.
The importance of strong literacy skills
In the classroom, reading is king; it is essential for academic success. Teachers, witnessing the gap between good and poor readers widening, may wonder what they or these children might be doing wrong. Parents, knowing that reading problems have consequences all across development including into adult life, question themselves, feeling alternately guilty and angry.
Why kids struggle with reading comprehension
Reading comprehension has always received a bad rap for being the subject kids struggle with the most. Helping boys with comprehension skills is paramount – after all, these skills are used in every subject (yes, even PE requires literacy skills for its assessment component!).
Comprehension can also be a challenge to teach! If a teacher moves too slowly, some students will get bored and check out. If a teacher moves too quickly, other students can get overwhelmed with the content and give up. In a traditional classroom, there is a wide range of reading abilities. Too often boys become disengaged and their results drop.
What can parents do to help their children?
If your son isn’t achieving strong literacy results, the best approach is to take immediate action. Ninety-five percent of poor readers can be brought up to grade-level if they receive effective help early. The longer you wait to get help for a child with reading difficulties, the harder it will be for that child to catch up.
Listen to your intuition. As a Literacy Specialist and LFB Founder, I have listened to parent after parent tell me about feeling there was a problem earlier on, yet they were persuaded to discount their intuition and just wait and see. Later, when they learnt time is of the essence in developing reading skills, the parents regretted the lost months or years.
We encourage our learners to complete 2 – 4 topics a week and in doing so, you will see real literacy gains and reading confidence.
How can Literacy for Boys help?
Literacy for Boys is the only online program in the world that is targeted specifically at boys and how they learn. We developed material that boys love – this is our secret to achieving outstanding literacy results. Worried that it’s too late for your teenager? Don’t be – our program caters for boys up to 15 years (& it’s been a huge hit in high schools this year!). We improve their comprehension, spelling, grammar and punctuation – all the literacy areas are covered!
Other ideas:
- Encourage boys to read what they want. Consider sports/hobbies magazines, the sports report in the weekend newspaper, biographies of famous musicians/rap artists/actors, books that are made into films. Reading anything encourages the habit of reading.
- Boys may need more encouragement than girls to read. This can come from parents reading to them, from school libraries or book clubs, or from teachers. Some effective classroom practices include asking students what a text means, asking their opinion of it, and helping them relate it to their own lives.
- Find learning methods that appeal to boys. The success of our program lies in boy-centric topics that are presented in a way that appeals to them. Our online program offers immediate feedback (it encourages boys to fix their mistakes) and choice (research supports the theory that choice of content is important to reluctant readers).
- Consider reading the same books as your son. I often share the story of how my son drifted away from books until I found a series about zombies (not my genre). However, the writing, character development and action were brilliant and we both loved sharing our thoughts on the plot and characters.
Success stories…..
“Literacy for Boys has totally engaged my son. The rewards built into the program keep him motivated and wanting to achieve more. Since he started using LFB we have noticed he is reading more and his spelling has improved.” (Tara)
“My child just loves this program. We have spent money on a lot of other programs but he will use them for a little while and then loses interest. Now he begs us to stay up an extra hour at night so he can complete one more topic and climb up the Leaderboard.” (Michelle)
“Thankyou! Luca has blown me away with his confidence and commitment to the program. The ladder is an amazing tool and from the moment we found it, he was determined to progress up that ladder. He is now bringing his confidence across to maths as well and we are just in such a lovely place with his schooling at the moment and the changes are credited to your program. Thank you so much Tanya!” (Joanne)
Check out our blogs for more ideas and tips.
Building Student Confidence with test taking tips
Boys Love LFB – Here’s what they have to say!
Get boys reading in the digital age
Why write? Tips for reluctant writers
Brought to you by Tanya Grambower
