Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write--from Baby to Age 7

Raise a Child Who Loves to Read

How do kids really learn to read? And how can you encourage interest in reading and writing from the start? In Raising Confident Readers, based on the five phases of literacy development, Dr. J. Richard Gentry provides fun and easy ways to teach your child to read and write successfully.

When it comes to language, the most critical brain growth happens in early childhood. Raising Confident Readers shows you how to activate and accelerate this capacity for learning: The key is to introduce the right activities at the right time. Whether your child is a baby or toddler, in preschool or kindergarten, or first or second grade, Dr. Gentry helps you identify your child's literacy phase and take the next steps to build writing, reading, and spelling skills. You'll discover:

• How your child's brain learns to read—and why encouraging drawing and scribbling is as essential as reading aloud
• The best at-home activities to develop literacy early, naturally, and joyfully
• Recommended children's books for each phase
• Strategies for overcoming dyslexia, delayed reading, and other challenges
• Checklists and a milestones diary to celebrate your child's progress

As your child moves through the five phases, they'll soon be sounding out and spelling words correctly, reading chapter books independently, and writing creative stories on their own. Complete with samples of children's writing throughout, Raising Confident Readers is an essential resource to foster your child's lifelong love of reading.

J. Richard Gentry, PhD is a nationally acclaimed expert on childhood literacy, reading, and spelling development, with more than thirty years experience working with beginning readers. A former university professor and elementary school teacher, he is currently an educational consultant living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.