Repetition is one of the most effective ways for children to learn, so encouraging your child to read stories that have repetitive lines and phrases is a great way for them to develop and reinforce key phonics and vocabulary skills.
While it may seem boring to the parent, not only reading a story with repetitive lines, but reading the same story aloud multiple times is not boring for the child – in fact, children’s brains are hard-wired to be receptive to learning through repetition.
Each time you read the same story aloud with your child, they are likely to pick up new pronunciations, words and phrases that they didn’t pick up during previous readings, and subsequent readings will only help to reinforce this information.
According to our educational expert, it can take between 50 & 100 repetitions for a child to learn a new sound or word. So keep persisting, it will all be worth it in the end!
After reading the same story multiple times, children are already familiar with the context of the story, and therefore can more easily focus on the individual letters, words, and phrases. Whereas, if they are reading a new story, their attention is divided between learning the context of the new story as well as all the new words and phrases.
This is not to say to limit your child to a single story or book, but reading a story over with them a few times before venturing onto a new story will help them to memorise important letters, words and phrases, and therefore be more likely to recall their pronunciation and meaning when encountered in new stories.
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