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Parents can do several things to foster reading

Reading specialist Angela Martin came to St. Petersburg recently to inspire parents to help their kids become better readers. But the first thing she did was make the task less daunting.

"Your job as a parent is not to teach your child to read, so you can just take that monkey off your back and throw it away," she told a crowd of about 100 families at Campbell Park Elementary School.

"Your job is to make sure your child is practicing reading every day. If you can make sure your child is practicing at least 15 minutes a day, that adds up to almost two hours a week." And that's almost 100 hours a year of working one-on-one with an adult.

Martin, who works for the Department of Education and travels the state conducting reading workshops, went on to share easy, effective ways parents can improve their children's reading skills every day.

Here's what she said along with some suggestions from three other Pinellas educators who were also at the reading workshop titled "Families Building Better Readers."

It was sponsored by Campbell Park and North Shore elementary schools.

"The danger of poor FCAT performance is: If a child doesn't believe they are capable when it gets difficult, they stop trying," Martin said. So let them have daily successes in your practice sessions. You don't want a book that's too easy, but make sure they are going to know some of the words on each page.

If your child is stuck on a word for more than three seconds, provide the word and continue the reading.

Letting him struggle for a long time on a particular word will make it more difficult for him to understand the whole page or chapter. After you finish your practice session, you can look back at the word and go over it.

Pick an interesting object in a room in your home like a feather duster, stuffed animal, bell or any other thing that's sitting around. Have your child guess it by sounding out the letter clues you offer. Write the word in big letters on paper as you offer each letter.

Start with just the first letter, and he gets one guess. If your word object is a basket, start with: "I spy something that starts with a "B.' " Your child may guess "bell" if there's also a bell in the room. Tell her that's a good guess but not the answer. Then add an "a" to the paper and let her guess. After that add an "s" and so on. When the word has a blend in it like "ch," "br" and "th" offer those letters together as one clue since they have to be used together to make the right sound.

Whether it's by watching the Animal Planet channel or taking part in dinner table conversations, children who know more words stand a better chance of recognizing them when they see them in a book or understand them when someone else is reading to them. And this makes reading more enjoyable.

Make flash cards with so-called "sight words."

These are words your child will learn to know by recognition. You can start with colors or other easy words. Use common words like "and," "a," "is," and so on. Let your child keep the words in a plastic recipe box or punch holes in them and store them together on a ring.

You can even stick them in a mini photo album. Your child will be proud when he "owns" the cards he knows well and keeps adding to them. At first they'll be thrilled to say "I know seven words," then that turns to 10, then 20. Then when they know a handful of sight words, those will be the easy words when they read books and they'll sound out the rest.

This is the motto of Marty Massimo, who works with the school district and led a session at the workshop. No matter the age or ability of your child, there are words in your daily life they can read. Point to McDonald's or Kmart signs as you drive around and ask them to read them.

Younger ones can also read names of cereals at the grocery store while the older ones can look through the nutrition chart on the side of the box and pick the ones that have less than 10 grams of sugar per serving. Have your kids read the weather on the back of the City & State section of this newspaper. Once they learn to pick out "St. Petersburg" in the chart, have them look for the city where grandparents live. If you're making brownies, read the directions together. Let them set the oven temperature to throw a little math into the process.

Pick a page from your junk mail catalogs and say: "I bet there are 10 words on here that start with the letter L." Your child will be happy to try to prove that you over- or underestimated.

"If your children do not like to read, let them read anything that makes them want to read," Massimo said. That means TV Guide or Sports Illustrated or Nickelodeon magazine.

If your child is struggling or just beginning to read, you both can read parts of a story.

The parent reads. Then when you come to a word you think your child can handle, tap the table to show it's his turn. He reads, then taps when it's your turn again. Of course, you wish he could read the whole page by himself. But one of your goals at home is to build confidence and make reading fun.

Read to your 1-year-old and read to your 12-year-old. Age doesn't matter. You can continually teach or reinforce the joy of reading and enhance vocabulary and comprehension. Martin offers these tips for reading aloud:

Read a book fairly quickly with a lot of expression.

Pause briefly to explain any words that may be unfamiliar.

Have your child read or say some part of the story with you.

Connect your child to the story by pointing out interests, characteristics or feelings he may share with the characters.

After you're done, talk about what you learned from the story or any questions that were left unanswered by the author.

Parents from North Shore Elementary and Campbell Park schools seemed to get a lot out of the workshop.

"I'm hoping to try to get him on the right track. I've got some ideas of what I can do at home," said Ephram Thomas, who was there with his son Trevon. Already Thomas tries to take his son to the St. Petersburg Main Library once a week to pick out new books.

Ponell Drayton was looking for more ways to help her grandson.

"I'll go to anything that will help their reading," said Calvin Calhoun, who has two kids ages 4 and 5.

You can reach Katherine Snow Smith by e-mail at snowsmith@verizon.net or write Rookie Mom, St. Petersburg Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.