5 Ways UK Parents Can Boost Their Child’s Reading Skills at Home

In the UK, learning to read is often seen as a process that should primarily take place in the classroom, managed with phonics screenings and Key Stage assessments. However, literacy is often developed outside school hours. Research consistently shows that the most successful readers are those who engage with texts in their own time, supported by a home environment that treats reading as a dynamic, fun and useful activity rather than a chore.

To understand how to best support your child in their reading journey, it’s helpful to look at the professional world of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). This is a specialised field of education focused on teaching English to those whose primary language is not English. While this might sound like it only applies to international classrooms, the core principles of TEFL—as taught in the courses by The TEFL Org—are universal.

In fact, the secret to boosting a child’s reading ability lies in moving beyond simple decoding language (sounding out words) and helping them become strategic thinkers – from simply “getting through the book” to actively engaging with the ideas inside it. 

Here are five fun, research-backed strategies to help children improve reading and language skills at home:

1. How to make the most of children’s background knowledge

Many parents believe that reading is a linear process: you look at the words, you say them, and you understand them. However, literacy experts suggest that what a child already knows about the world is just as important as their ability to sound out letters. This existing knowledge, or background knowledge, is their secret superpower. It’s the bridge between what they read and what they understand about it.

You can boost your child’s comprehension by making this knowledge intentional. Before opening a new book, spend a few minutes chatting about the topic. If you are about to read a story about the ocean, ask your child what they remember from a trip to the seaside or a documentary they watched.

When children consciously link what they are reading to what they already know, they move from being passive to strategic readers. This doesn’t just help them understand the current book; it builds a mental habit of making connections, which is a hallmark of high-level literacy.

2. How to master inferencing 

A common hurdle for young readers is what we often refer to as reading between the lines, or what teachers call inferencing. Authors rarely tell the reader everything; they leave gaps that the reader must fill. 

For example, if a book says, “Liam grabbed his umbrella and sighed as he looked out the window,” the author doesn’t need to say it is raining – the reader infers it. This means that the reader can connect the context clues (e.g. umbrella, sigh, looking outside) to the message the writer is trying to convey.

While reading with your child, focus on character motivations and cause-and-effect. For example, ask questions like:

• Why do you think the character did that?
• What do they really want right now?
• How do we know they are feeling sad if the book doesn’t say the word ‘sad’?

Digging below the surface helps children build a mental model of the story. You can also help them track cohesive links – the small words like “he,” “she,” or “it” that connect ideas across sentences. Making sure a child knows exactly who “he” refers to in a complex paragraph is a simple but powerful way to ensure they aren’t losing the thread of the narrative. 

3. How to take advantage of children’s first language (L1) 

For the many families in the UK who speak a language other than English at home, there is a common misconception that speaking the mother tongue might hinder a child’s English reading development. In fact, the opposite is true. Research into multilingualism suggests that reading strategies are transferable. This concept of “language transfer” is a key element in the teacher training provided by The TEFL Org. If a child learns how to guess a word’s meaning from context or how to skim a text for information in Assamese, Spanish, or Urdu, they can apply those exact same strategies when reading in English.

Parents should feel encouraged to read with their children in their strongest language. Discussing a story’s plot, analysing a character’s choices, or predicting an ending in a home language builds the underlying “literacy muscles” that the child will then use at school. Being bilingual is an asset to reading, not a barrier, as it allows children to use a wider range of world knowledge to make sense of what they read.

4. How to become “word detectives” together

There is a big difference between a child knowing a word automatically (a “skill”) and a child having a plan for when they encounter a word they don’t know (a “strategy”). To help your child grow, encourage them to become word detectives when they hit a snag. 

Instead of immediately telling them the definition of a tricky word, ask them to look at the linguistic context. This means looking at the words and sentences surrounding the mystery word for clues.

Here are some ideas:

• The “before and after” trick. Encourage them to read the sentence before and the sentence after to see if the meaning becomes clearer.
• Morphology hunt. Look for familiar parts of the word. Does it have a prefix or suffix they recognise?
• Strategic decision making. Teach them that it’s okay to decide how much a word matters. Sometimes, you can guess the general meaning of a word and keep going; other times, it’s worth stopping to look it up.

By teaching them these steps, you are giving them a toolkit for independent reading, ensuring they don’t give up when the vocabulary gets challenging.

5. What does Reading mean?

In the classroom, children often focus on intensive reading. This means carefully picking apart a single text to find out information. At home, you have the freedom to encourage extensive reading, which is reading a wide variety of materials for pleasure.

Reading doesn’t always have to mean a paperback novel. To keep motivation high, especially for children who find traditional books boring, try incorporating different formats:

• Scanning for info. Use a museum website or a cinema listing. Ask your child to “scan” the page to find a specific detail, like an entrance fee or a showtime.
• Skimming for gist. Look at a news blog or a magazine article. Ask them to “skim” the text quickly just to tell you the general topic or the “big idea.”
• Real-world instructions. Recipes, “to-do” lists, and game manuals are excellent for showing children that reading has a practical, immediate purpose.

By using texts that children naturally enjoy outside the classroom, you relieve the pressure of schoolwork and help them see reading as a functional part of their daily lives.

It’s all about the approach

Boosting a child’s reading skills at home requires a shift in the parents’ mindset. Whether you are chatting about a character’s motives, using your home language to deconstruct a plot, or scanning a website for fun facts, you are teaching your child that reading is an active process of making sense of the world.