The report “Helping Your Child Become a Reader,” is a very important report with the sole purpose of emphasizing on the importance of teaching reading to one’s child and on directing them through systematically arranged activities in their effort to practice reading in a meaningful way. It states the importance of parent’s active involvement with the activities that the children conduct in learning reading and systematic monitoring of the progress. In so doing, the entire horizon of knowledge becomes available to the young inquisitive children. And through doing activities with their parents, they find the task of reading fun, interesting, valuable and important. However, the title of the report reflects the scope of the report but partially; representing a motivational appeal to the parents to help the young children learn how to read, but reflecting very little on the vast analysis of factors and processes related to it, that have been explored and instructed throughout the report.
It is an analytic and instructive report aiming at guiding the parents’ actions, focus and assessment of their children’s gradual progression of learning, holding their development of reading skill as the means of it. It explains and instructs, in great technical details, on how to help the children throughout the process of learning reading actively by participating with them and by making them do very carefully designed activities that are, again, age specific and diverse in functional nature. It also provides criteria to monitor progression of their reading development which is again very much technical and age specific. The guideline on techniques and resources provided by the end is one the best possible repository for any aware parent. Above all, the complete report is based on child psychology and mechanism of learning, in a very much scientific manner. The way it explains activities and defines even what is Reading, it provides a very much analytic way of approaching child development and its monitoring. It is designed in such a way that no prior technical knowledge is necessary to understand any part of it. It is meant for parents of all walks of life and aims at general and equal development of all children of all classes.
The structure of the report is a very effective one. It opens with a quote from Laura Bush stating in brief the focal argument or statement advocated through this report. Then it goes on defining various concepts as what becoming a reader means or what are the benefits of combined effort with kids in developing language skills. Then it introduces the techniques or tricks to instruct the kid indirectly by doing the task themselves. Soon follows particular age- wise activities in a very descriptive manner, and later comes the criteria based on which the progress rate can be judged. It ends with a very rich list of online and offline resources for parents. Overall, the report is structured in such a manner that everyone will be able to understand it to its explanatory depth and vast scope of particular guideline in general.
As its prefatory elements, it provides a very rich description of background and purpose on pages 2 to 6. These pages provide very specific and clear links to why the report was formed with what purpose in mind and also why the purpose was important. They also provide an introduction to the angle from which the issue of parental active involvement and responsible monitoring of child’s progress is being considered. This helps to set the focus of the readers at the very outset of the report.
One of the notable features of this report is the range of visuals used throughout the entire report. Undeniably, the visuals provide the report a very professional disposition. However, how far they are necessary is a matter to be explored delving deeper. The basic visuals are simply highlighted parts set in blocked sections that serve simply to identify individual segments that express something a little different from the rest of the texts. The use of visuals serve a good and helpful role in understanding the report easily. They are all the more important as it is meant for general people.
The titles of the various points of sections are relevant of course but they do not reflect the content of the point in a complete sense sometimes; as in the case of “What Happens Next?” on page 19. Understandably, it is more of a name of an activity and so is acceptable. But the title “If You Think There’s a Problem” on page 33 can create certain complication in understanding. Firstly, it sounds more like a spoken expression and less like a title. Nor does it clarify or indicate what sort of problems are being referred to. However, this is not much of an obstruction since the reader can find out the focus of the point soon.
One of the best parts of the report is its very much rich repository of online suggested resources. This report takes brilliant advantage of online resources as a means to enhance readability. As we find on page 39, there are four links provided to avail access to four resources or websites leading to government or research center websites and resources. Since the report was meant to address general people of America, it made many such pages or internet based links available so that the readers do not have to give too much effort to find out resources for better understanding and further reference. It kept additional resources just a click away. This is the best possible use of online medium in such a report.
This report addresses very important issues in the way to development of learning and aims at promoting equal rate of development in all segments of society. With this aim in hand, the way it has been prepared and designed is the best possible way to address general people.
References
Spellings, Margerate. (2005). Helping Your Child Become a Reader. Retrieved from
http://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/reader.pdf.
Lannon, John (2007). Technical Communication. Longman. Print.
