A guide to reading Thursday 20th October 2016

Our aims To provide an overview of how we teach reading across Foundation and into Key Stage 1. To provide you with ideas to support your child as they read.

How we teach your child to read Guided reading Reading aloud Phonics Independent

Getting the balance right! Learning to read Phonics Developing decoding strategies Developing comprehension strategies Reading to learn for purpose and pleasure Quality texts Key authors Talk about books Engagement and motivation Quality reading areas

Learning to read through Phonics It’s an approach that teaches children to decode words quickly and skilfully by: Recognising the sound each letter makes. Identifying the sounds that different combinations of letters make. Blending these sounds together from left to right to make a word. Chunking words into smaller sections to help effective decoding.

Why Phonics? Research says that when Phonics is taught in a systematic and structured way… It’s the most effective way to teach young children to read. They learn the skills needed to tackle new words. They read more accurately than those taught using other methods. Decoding task

How we teach phonics Have a set time each day to teach phonics. Group children within Foundation Stage, Year 1 & 2. An adult leads each group. Use the Letters and Sounds document broken into 6 Phases. All follow the same lesson structure: Revisit/Review Teach Practise Apply Assess Make it as fun, practical and memorable as possible. Phonicsplay website playing with sounds Practical activities!!!

How we make phonics fun Phonics bop Popcorn game I spy game Farmer, farmer, may we cross your icy river game? Pirates ahoy game Simon says Sound hopscotch If you are happy and you know it…

How we make phonics fun Use of ICT – phonics play Alliteration and rhyming games Making up silly sentences Write in air, fuzzy fingers, tickling fingers & tickling train Quick write Phoneme frame Guess the word/head bands

Phonics Screening Check Is completed by all Year 1 pupils each June. The test incorporates sounds from Phases 2 to 5. Ensures that all pupils are making good progress with regards to phonic development.

Phonics Screening Check Real words week start best day slide rusty dentist Pseudo words tox tord thazz terg jound snemp

A Reading session Discuss the front cover, title, author, illustrator, who the main character might be, what the story might be about. Use the blurb to add to this discussion. Make any links to their own experiences. Tell the story using the pictures, pointing out tricky words using the pictures to help, speech and thought bubbles, make simple predictions before you turn over the page etc. Go back to the beginning to tackle the words. Recap the clues within the picture. Books out around the room

A Guided Reading session Tackle each word one at a time, chunking phonetically plausible words using phonic knowledge. Sometimes cover the rest of the sentence to only allow children to see the word they are currently working on. Re-read the sentence again for meaning. Highlight punctuation marks, unusual words, alliteration and rhyming words within the sentence and discuss why the author has used it. Discuss how a character might be feeling.

Points to remember… Children can often correctly read a word or grapheme on one page but read it incorrectly on the next. Make links back to the phonic letters or tricky words that you have covered. If children are finding words or graphemes tricky to remember make it memorable for them. If children are tired, just do a couple of pages that night or do a first read of the book. The amount of time you spend reading with children directly correlates with the progress they make. We would ask that you read at least 5 times per week.

The tricks to developing a confident, independent reader Think of yourself as a facilitator. Teach them that there’s lots of ways to decode a difficult word and if the first way doesn’t work try a different one. Use their phonic skills to decode unfamiliar words. Use the pictures to work out tricky words. Segment words into smaller sections to make it easier to work out. Read to the end of the sentence to get the overall meaning, then go back to work out the tricky word.

The tricks to developing a confident, independent reader Discuss with children: if it’s a fiction or non-fiction book, identify the title, author, illustrator and key features of the text e.g. font, labels, headings, speech bubbles etc. what they like/dislike about the book, their favourite characters, encourage them to make predictions, discuss how a character might be feeling, what the setting of the story is like, any interesting words, rhyming or alliteration, Encourage children to quick skim read for specific information based upon their understanding of what they have read.

How can you support your child with their reading? Read and discuss books regularly together identifying predictions, feelings, likes/dislikes, link to own experiences. Use the prompts within book band guidance notes, guided reading notes & key questions for discussion. Visit the local library. Point out signs, lists, menus, posters etc. as you are out and about. Listen to CDs or taped stories or rhymes. Play lots of games to practise reading high frequency words and graphemes just by sight. Make up your own stories or endings together. If you have any concerns please do pop in to speak to us.

Reading Certificates To encourage the children to read more regularly we are implementing a new reward system Each child will have a chart and every time they read at home please make a comment in their diary and sign the chart The children will receive a certificate every time they have read 5 (bronze), 15 (silver) and 25 times (gold).