Year 1 Reading and Phonics Evening Welcome

What do we want for our children as readers? To read for pleasure To read for information To have a love of reading To do this it is vital that the children understand what they are reading.

The simple view of reading We need to be aware that different skills and abilities contribute to development of word recognition skills from those that contribute to comprehension.

Phonics in Year 1 We continue with “Letters and Sounds” Phase 5 builds on the phonemes that have already been learned and extends understanding of how to read polysyllable words.

Phase 5 New phonemes Alternative graphemes and phonemes Split digraphs New tricky words Spellings

Alternative graphemes Certain representations of a phoneme are more likely in different parts of a word For example, the ae phoneme is usually represented as “ai” or “a-e” If it is at the start or in the middle of words. The best bet for the end of the word. is “ay”.

Decoding and Segmenting Syllables: eg Manchester thundering sandwich, shampoo Compound words: sandpit, helpdesk, windmill, tonight

How can you help? Practising reading the digraphs at speed is important as recognition needs to be almost instant for fluency to develop. As your child reads, encourage them to recognise digraphs as complete units of sound, rather than 2 individual phonemes. Eg “ou” rather than “o” “u”.

Assessment

Understanding of reading: The connection between reading speed and comprehension; a film is made up of still images flashed in rapid succession to simulate movement. Slow down the film, and the movement and meaning slows and the film's impact is diminished. Viewers won't learn as much about the film as if it were shown at normal speed. With reading the same thing can happen. When a person reads word by word, like frame by frame, they are not reading on the level of ideas. You need to read on some level that's more conversational and allows things to coalesce into ideas themselves.”  - Doug Evans, Institute of Reading Development

How can we support the development of fluency in reading How can we support the development of fluency in reading? How do we move from decoding to understanding? How can we combine the development of both?

Common Parental Concerns “They keep looking at the pictures!” “They keep guessing!” “My child wants to talk about every page!” Even when a word is repeated on every page, they can’t read it!”

Create the climate for success!

Before opening the book Create anticipation! Make it exciting! What can we see? What do we think the book might be about? Why? Is it fiction or non-fiction? How do we know? Can the blurb help us?

Before reading the book “Walk” through the book. Emphasise any unfamiliar or difficult words by talking about the pictures. Play “spot the…. tricky word/ words with___ phonemes. Model being inquisitive about what is going to happen.

Developing comprehension skills Draw a story map Make stick or shadow puppets Make a picture with speech bubbles or use a comic app Make a new adventure for the character Keep a reading journal

Questions to develop Comprehension Why? How? Who? Why? Why? WHY?? Asking these questions, not only encourages the children to think about why a character has behaved as they did, but also supports them in orally practising their responses in sentences that make sense. Model this to them: “Hmm… I wonder why….. ?“

How do you know? What tells us.. These questions link the answers directly to the text and may require an investigation to get to the real answers. The pictures will support this and can provide crucial evidence to back up ideas from the text.

Check individual word understanding Often young children do not understand words, or phrases that we think of as straightforward or every-day.