Highfields Primary School Learning to Read Information for Parents October 2015 Please take a seat. Please switch phones to silent. Thank you.

25/06/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Training 2

Comprehension Heard 33 million words Constant positive topical talk 1700 hours of stories Comprehension Jessica at three

Comprehension Heard 9 million words Instructional talk 25 hours of stories Comprehension John at three

How do we learn to read?

For young children, phonics is an important part of this process. At Highfields children pursue a rapid ‘learn to read’ programme called Read Write Inc. so they can ‘read to learn’ for the rest of their lives. Read write Inc. teaches both word reading and language comprehension

What is Read Write Inc. Phonics? s t play sleep sat

Phonics Consists of: Identifying sounds in spoken words Recognising the common spellings of each phoneme (sound). Synthesising (Blending) sounds into words for reading. Segmenting words into sounds for spelling.

What is a sound? A Phoneme is the technical name for a sound A phoneme is the smallest unit you can hear or say in a word. There are 44 phonemes in the English language. How many phonemes (sound) can you hear in cat ? Pronounced in their purest form – no schwa.

A grapheme is the sound written down These are the letters that represent the phoneme. The grapheme could be 1 letter, 2 letters or more. There are 44 phonemes in English and about 150 different graphemes to represent these sounds. It’s a complex code.

We have a complex English alphabetic code

The English language is a complex code… It would be easy if we only had to learn Set 1 and Set 2 sounds. ayigh play eight cake straight right pie kite fly Set 3 sounds

So how do we make it easier for children………….. We teach the simple code first – Set 1 sounds 6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy

o f b g Set 1 Sounds 6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy t mat sad sat

6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy

What are the first steps in learning to read? (sounds and blending) First we need to teach a child to say and read the sounds so they read them at speed. Speedy recall is a very important part of reading. Then we will teach them to blend the sounds together to read words (orange card) – Fred Talk!

o f b g Word reading (Blending) 6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy t mat sad sat

6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy m at dog

Teaching steps for blending sounds 6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy Review Speed Sounds Blend sounds orally (Fred Talk) Blend with the Speed Sound cards Blend with the magnetic letters/ cards

How to help your child to blend sounds together to read words? Let’s now watch this parent tutorial arent-tutorial-teaching-sound-blending/

6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy m at mat

What happens in a phonics session? Pinny time! coat the Play a game! Revisit and review Teach Practise Apply Apply Apply

What about High Frequency and tricky words? In addition to this, each the week the children learn ‘tricky’ red words (those that are not spelt phonetically) and key sight vocabulary. They will bring these home on their ‘red word’ keyring or red card. The key sight and high frequency word lists can be found in the handouts we will be sending home. In total there are 300 words to learn! 100 in Rec/Year1 and an additional 200 in Year 2

Nonsense words (alien words) 6/25/2016Copyright Ruth Miskin Literacy blunbipquen

What are the first steps in learning to write? (segmenting for spelling, handwriting rhymes & pencil grip) Identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (e.g. c-a-t) Fluent recall of the grapheme representing each sound. Forming each grapheme with the correct sequence of movements so they can efficiently write down letters for each sound (phoneme) to form the word.

How to help your child at home…

You can read stories with your child. Relentlessly. Read favourite stories over and over again Read some stories at a higher level than they can read for themselves. Listen to them reading their take home books. (RWI books) Help your child with their sound and word cards Using simple sound / word flash cards little and often. Listen to them reading their take home books. Playing a sound game. Practical or ICT based. Watch the storytime at home video on the ruthmiskintraining website.storytime at home

You can practise pronouncing sounds. Remember no ‘fuh’ and ‘luh’! – no schwa

You can have fun with Fred Talk. “What a tidy r-oo-m!” “Where’s your c-oa-t?” “Time for b-e-d!”

And…. By talking to your child as much as possible and ‘feeding’ them new and different words: “Let’s eat our lunch now.” “Let’s munch our lunch now.” “Let’s devour our lunch now!” I’m not just ….. I’m …….. Attendance and punctuality. Even repeated lateness can mean your child misses this bit.

You can watch parent video tutorials. For how to do all these things and more

You can order the resources online. arents/ arents/

owl/reading

Ideas for games. Count the sound buttons – c a t = 3 t r ai n = 4 ch o p = 3 h or se = 3 (sort into different pots) Can you make a dog dig? Which phonemes do we need to change to change a pot into a pit? Crossing the river – you can cross the river if… Rhyming Pebble – older children explore spelling Silly questions – Is a dog red? Can a pen hop?

By enriching conversations through description: “Look at that rain. It looks like little diamonds sparkling on the window pane!” By having fun with words and language. “I’m as hot as a spud in a cooking pot!” By explaining idioms that might be obvious to us but strange to a child. For example, what does ‘dotted about’ mean? By praising your child for using new words or interesting images. And what about my older child / more advanced reader? Find it … Prove it questions build comprehension power! By encouraging a story voice – we do not write or spell as we speak. Investigate split-e (‘magic e’) words.

Further opportunities at Highfields Pupil progress meetings Yrs 1-6 in December January / early February for Reception. Open Door – a good time to sneak a peek at the reading resources being used in your child’s classroom. Website Year 1 Phonic Check meeting Year 2 SATs preparation meeting.

Thank you for your participation this morning. Please spread the word that this session will be repeated at 5:00pm to enable as many parents as possible to come along. Notes from the meeting will be on the website.