Reading Comprehension

Reading Progression Learning to read the words – using phonics – this skill needs to continue Learning what the words mean – vitally important that children know what the words mean or they cannot understand Vocabulary – children who can read the words well but struggle to answer questions about the text may be struggling because there are just too many words they don’t know what they mean. It’s important that we train children to ask us as they are reading, what a word means. In everyday life, check your children know what words mean, get them trained to always ask you what a word means Vocabulary issues – modern life has less conversation and talk in it than it used to. Children are hearing less words, on average 19 million less by 4 years in some households.

Enriching Reading content A wide range of books is crucial to developing a large vocabulary, which in turn will improve comprehension Reading the same type of books will be limiting Reluctant readers can be encouraged with comics and graphic books to get them started Some children prefer factual books (Space topic?) – just don’t limit it to factual books only

Spellings Spelling ability is often linked to reading ability, in particular the child’s ability with phonics and the amount of vocabulary they know Spelling ability can be due to poor memory skills. If your memory is poor there is no “cure” for this. Instead, you have to memorise words (or number facts, anything!) in inventive ways to make many new neural pathway connections to different parts of the brain (more on this soon) Short term to long term memory commitment – for some people this happens automatically but for many people it doesn’t. Research shows most people need to learn the same thing 7 times to commit it to long term memory. Even then, 7 times in the same day or week is not going to make any difference - new learning needs revisiting several times over several weeks/months – this is why we repeat and revisit at school. At home, go back over spellings from previous weeks to keep them in your child’s memory.

Grammar and Punctuation Grammar – is the study of the way words are used to make sentences. At home, when reading, you can ask children to find a verb (doing verbs), an adjective (descriptive words) and noun (name of person, place or thing). Past tense (look for –ed) and present tense words too/to/two Punctuation – when reading, look for use of inverted commas for speech, look for commas and ask children why they are there? APOSTROPHES! The biggest punctuation crime! Please try to model good usage and if you spot mistakes on signage when out and about, show your child. Try to make sure that you use capital letters, full stops and apostrophes in your own writing so children see good examples

Maths Please focus on Learn Its and times tables at home. Use the memory techniques we talked about earlier. We can’t stress enough how important it is to all progress in maths, to know times tables and basic number facts (ways to make 10, ways to make 20, doubles and halves). CONCRETE- PICTORIAL- ABSTRACT Please let your child use concrete materials (bricks, counters, pegs, balls, whatever!) if they need to. Rushing children on from using concrete materials to the pen and paper methods only, will only damage their later understanding in maths. They need solid foundations, to be able to see the size of a number before they move on.