Literacy Information for Parents 10th June 2014

Reading with your child One of the greatest gifts that you can give to your child is a love of reading. Research has shown that one of the biggest indicators of success in a child's life is whether or not they have books in the home. As a parent, try to focus on making reading fun and enjoyable.

It’s never too soon to start Young children will take their first steps towards becoming readers by learning how to behave like one. You can help them by: Teaching them how to hold the book properly Discussing the title and author Differentiating between pictures and print Reading from left to right Allowing them to turn their own pages

A child should respond to and understand, enjoy and learn from reading A child should respond to and understand, enjoy and learn from reading. It is our job to foster this enjoyment with the skills necessary to become a fluent reader. Research has shown that children become more fluent readers when they are exposed to a ‘positive reading environment’ where books are valued and reading is done by all the family.

positive role model namely you!!! There are many, many different things that you can do. Here are just a few: Let your child see you reading Children need to see a positive role model namely you!!! Read something with your child - It doesn't need to be a book. The secret is to find something that your child is desperate to read - comics, magazines, football programmes, newspapers, internet pages, texts, e-mails, catalogues etc. This can be a newspaper, magazine, anything you like. This is a powerful message to send to your child so go on, put your feet up for 10 minutes and have a read.

Talk about what they are reading - Talk before you start Talk about what they are reading - Talk before you start. Talk whilst you are reading. Talk after you have finished. You can still talk about what your child is reading even if they don't want to actually read with you any more. Praise your child - Studies show that children who are given specific support with their reading make much greater progress if they are given lots of praise than if they are given the support alone.

Reading for Enjoyment Reading with your child should be an enjoyable experience for you both!! Find somewhere you and your child can get really comfortable Look for somewhere really quiet without distractions

Reading with comprehension An important part of the reading process is developing a child’s ability to comprehend what he/she is reading. In order to do this effectively children need to develop a number of skills: Be able to read between the lines and find out what is inferred and assumed Be able to read beyond the lines in order to generalise and speculate

Which part did you like best? Questioning is one of the main ways that we can support the development of comprehension skills. Questions to ask: Which part did you like best? Did you find anything funny/sad in the story Why did you not like the story and why? What do you think will happen next? Did you find out anything that you did not know before?

Quotable Reading Quotes "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go." — Dr. Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"

Quotable Reading Quotes "There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island." — Walt Disney

Quotable Reading Quotes “After providing food and shelter, reading to our children and encouraging their own reading is probably the very best thing we can do for them.” - Michael Morpurgo Foreword to ‘A Little Aloud: For Children’

Strategies to teach children to read There has been a huge shift in the past few years in how we teach reading in UK schools. This is having a big impact and helping many children learn to read and spell. Children learn to read in a variety of ways and therefore different approaches should be used. Phonics is recommended in helping them learn to read, along with; sight vocabulary, picture clues, meaning and recognising patterns e.g. rhyme

Word Recognition and Graphic Knowledge Children need to build up a large vocabulary in order to become fluent readers. The pencil and ladder words support the acquisition of the 45 most common words in the written English language.

HFW- High Frequency Words High frequency words are quite simply those words which occur most frequently in written material, for example, "and", "the", "as" and "it". Some of the high frequency words can be sounded out using basic phonic rules, e.g. "it" is an easy word to read using phonics. However, many of the high frequency words are not phonically regular e.g. “said” and are therefore hard to read in the early stages. These words are sometimes called tricky words or sight words.

So, what exactly is phonics? Words are made up from small units of sound called phonemes. Phonics teaches children to be able to listen carefully and identify the phonemes that make up each word. This helps children to learn to read words and to spell words In phonics lessons children are taught three main things:

GPCs They are taught GPCs. This stands for grapheme phoneme correspondences. This simply means that they are taught all the phonemes in the English language and ways of writing them down. These sounds are taught in a particular order. The first sounds to be taught are:  s, a, t, p.

Blending Children are taught to be able to blend. This is when children say the sounds that make up a word and are able to merge the sounds together until they can hear what the word is. This skill is vital in learning to read. e.g. c-a-t cat

Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames Segmenting Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words. Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames

Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames Segmenting Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words. Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames ch

Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames Segmenting Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words. Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames ch a

Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames Segmenting Children are also taught to segment. This is the opposite of blending. Children are able to say a word and then break it up into the phonemes that make it up. This skill is vital in being able to spell words. Throughout KS1 we use phoneme frames ch a t

Tips on hearing your child read.

Writing with your child Close links to reading!

Writing In the nursery and reception classes children have many opportunities to make marks in a variety of ways e.g. in sand, in shaving foam, with paints, with chalks etc. These marks eventually develop into emergent writing that the children can read back themselves.

Children are taught at an early stage how to form the letters both upper case and lower case. They need to understand the connection between upper case and lower case letters.

In our school we teach children the cursive script as this makes strong links with reading and writing. In addition cursive script supports the teaching of phonics by easily joining the graphemes. At first some children might find this process difficult but it pays off and children end up with beautiful handwriting and spell well.

Interesting ways of practising handwriting Make it fun with lots of praise! Talking through the letters with a little story to help formation Helping left handers - Sit a left-handed child on the left side of writing areas so they do not bump elbows with those next to them! Other strategies on a sheet. Encouraging an effective writing position

As children progress through the school their writing reflects their experiences with different genre e.g. poetry, fiction and non fiction. Adults model writing during literacy sessions and children are given opportunities to access a variety of themes to support their writing through quality texts, pictures and interactive programmes. They are also taught how IT can support information for their writing i.e. the use of laptops and the internet.

Helping your child There are many different fun and exciting ways you can help your child to learn the spelling of any words, in our school some strategies go hand in hand with practising handwriting, e.g. Write the word in the air Write the word on someone's back Write the word on your hand Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check

Helping your child Teach children to make up their own Take a picture of the word Playing games e.g. “Snap” or memory pairs. “Lotto” or “Bingo” Mnemonics- we use mnemonics in school to help us remember specific spellings, e.g. Teach children to make up their own

If the situation is becoming stressful, don’t be afraid to abandon it and try again another day.

The New National Curriculum for English

Key changes – KS1 Focus on phonics Learning of poetry (including reciting poetry) introduced Specific spellings, e.g. days of the week Joined writing expected in Year 2 Proof-reading of own writing Grammar ‘I goed’ ‘there, their, they’re’ Appreciation of our literary heritage Focus on speaking and listening

Finally Research has shown that children who receive support from home make better progress.