The Downs Church of England Primary School and Northbourne Church of England Primary School Reading Workshop - October 2014

Our Intentions for this afternoon Explain how we teach your child to read. How you can help your child catch the reading bug!

The Reading Bug is the one bug you want your child to catch so how can we work together to catch it? The answer to this is easier than you think… Children need to be immersed in books! Adults need to show children how fun and exciting books are! We read for enjoyment!

In school we read a variety of texts with the children. We encourage you to do the same at home.

We all want your child to be a successful reader and to enjoy the experience of reading. but Learning to read is a complicated skill and there is not one way which suits all children. However the first step is the same for everyone – for children to develop reading skills they need to have an understanding of the English language. For all of us this happens through talk. Through talk we learn new vocabulary and the knowledge of how to structure sentences. By sharing stories together your child will learn how stories are structured and story patterns.

It can be a long and frustrating task to help your child learn to read so it is important to put ourselves in their position to understand the challenge they face.

   e  e     e    e  e   The   Welcome to The Downs. First they need to understand that the squiggles represent letters and that letters together make words. Imagine being presented with this and being asked to read it. This is what it is like for children looking at words. The first thing we do is start to unpick the meaning of individual letters.  = e Then we look at learning key words.  = the As we learn all the letters we will be able to decode the sentence.

Step One: Learning the sounds of individual words We focus on pure sounds not letter names. For example: e is sounded as ‘eh’ not ‘eee’ f is sounded as ‘ffff’ not ‘eff’ Once the children are happy using the sounds they can begin to segment words within their reading. c-a-t cat

Sound talk The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word. The merging is called blending, and is a vital skill for reading e.g: c-a-t = cat Children will also learn to do this the other way round. The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds (phonemes) in order, through the word e.g: cat = c-a-t This is called segmenting, and is a vital skill for spelling.

Learning the phonemes Children will learn the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes) They will also learn that some phonemes are made up of more than one letter, eg: /ll/ as in b-e-ll We use actions to help to remember the phonemes. Get your child to show you!

It is important to use the phonics resources that your child brings home.

What can you do at home? Use letter sounds and not letter names. Write in lower case letters. Encourage your child to recognise letters in their environment; street names, signs, packets, brand labels. You will find many of your children are already reading as they recognise these things:

Step Two: Segmenting words into individual sounds We start with two letter words and then build up. VC words are those consisting of a vowel and then a consonant, eg: at, in, up CVC words follow the pattern consonant, vowel, consonant, eg: cat, dog, pet Words such as tick or bell also count as CVC words; although they contain four letters, they only have three sounds Your child will also learn several tricky words; those that cannot be sounded out e.g: the, to, I, go, no

How can you help? Sing an alphabet song together Play ‘I spy’ Continue to play with magnetic letters, using some two-grapheme (letter) combinations, eg: r-ai-n = rain blending for reading rain = r-ai-n segmenting for spelling Praise your child for trying out words Ask for a list of tricky words Create phonic games with a timer Play pairs

Not all children will learn at the same rate! Your child should be supported whatever their rate of learning There is a very close link between difficulty with phonics and hearing, so if your child is making progress more slowly than expected, it is worth having their hearing checked.

Sound Match Children will have a selection of pictures and a specific sound. They need to match the pictures to the correct sound. Word building activities Children will have a selection of sounds which they need to put together to build the word.

Word Match Children will have a selection of pictures and words. They need to read the words and find the matching picture. Sentence Match Children will have a selection of pictures and sentences which they need to put together.

Reading Books Our reading scheme is in colours. Your children will progress through these levels at their own pace. Within each colour level there are numbers 1-4. This enables the class teacher to direct the children to specific books within their level.

Celebrate their successes. Enjoy books together. Use silly voices, act out funny parts and even make up your own stories. Make reading part of your child’s daily routine but do not make it a chore! Encourage them to explore their environment and read the words which are around them everyday.