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Use this activity to help a child who is reading word by word.  These readers are easy to spot as they read in a very stilted manner.  We call this 'voice pointing'.   Your goal is to get them taking in a whole line of print with one or two glances, and read it with a normal conversational rhythm, filling in any blanks to make it a complete, meaningful sentence. 

Select a suitable, easy to read book with short lines of print. 

Hold a card above the line of text to be read and just before the reader reaches the end of the line move the card down to cover the last word(s), or phrase. 

This forces the reader to do two things.  First they have to complete the line using an anticipation or 'guessing' technique (which is really using their language skills to complete the meaning of the text).  For the first few times you may have to encourage the reader to say what they think the sentence should say. Their reluctance is a sure sign that they are not used to anticipating the meaning, but are more comfortable reading words only after they have seen each one.  Secondly they are forced to try to keep their eyes ahead of their voice.  Readers who are lacking in confidence and think that this will cause them to make mistakes need to be reassured that you expect them to make some changes as this is normal reading behaviour.  In fact part of their development is to understand that the more print they take in at once the more mistakes they are going to make.  Convince them that this is what fast (or 'good') readers do, but they must make sense and maintain the meaning of the sentence.

Treat it as a game and see how much your child can get ahead of you.  You will be surprised to learn that a whole line of print can be seen in one glance after a little practice.

The down side of this will be a small loss of accuracy, but don't be concerned because those miscues should, (and will usually) maintain the original meaning of the text.

Explanatory note:  The worst case scenario

Most children who read well read 'naturally' and make some changes to the text.  These changes, which include re-arranging words, substituting similar words, and omitting words, maintain the meaning and syntax, and sounds like normal, natural speech.    However, by monitoring their oral reading closely, teachers and parents can over-correct their reading as they try to make these children read more accurately.  Most children want to do as they are told and unfortunately some (not all) really do listen and do change what they are doing.  The down side of this is loss of fluency, word by word reading, and lack of comprehension.  This reduces the child's capacity to read because they are forced to overload their visual perception skills and rely less on their language and meaning support systems.  A cycle of failure is set up as the more a child tries to conform to the adult monitor's expectations the more errors occur and self confidence takes a dive.  The unfortunate consequence is that the adults are now getting quite anxious about this and pay even more attention to the reader's performance, and spend more time listening to their reading and correcting errors. 

Over time these children become reluctant readers (and writers) as their very inefficient reading techniques become ingrained, they read less than their peers,  and they never reach their potential.