A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. ~Chinese Proverb Reading Workshop 21st September 2015 “After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” Philip Pullman A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.  ~Chinese Proverb Welcome parents to the workshop and discuss the focus for the School development plan is to develop Mastery in Reading. Children need a rich and varied reading experience in order to achieve mastery.

Aim of the Reading Workshop To help you become aware of all the different skills needed to master reading To provide practical ways to help support you when you are reading with your child at home Explain that we are focusing on the big picture and that reading is one of those things that need to be done little and often and that the use of questions is vital to improving children’s comprehension. Reiterate to the parents that the books at home are at an independent level and therefore the children should be reading them with relative ease. The books they read at school are at an instructional level which teach the children how to develop reading skills. Highlight that there needs to be a mixture of both types as the maintain challenge whilst keeping the children’s confidence up.

Use a range of strategies Including accurate decoding Assessment Focus 1: Use a range of strategies Including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning

s a t p i n m d o g c e u r h b f l w j v x y z ck ff ll ss zz ch sh th ai ee igh oa oo ar or ur ow oi ear air ure er ay ou ie ea oy ir ue aw wh ph ew oe au o-e e-e a-e i-e u-e Explain that the children, through the daily Letters and Sounds lessons in Year 1 and sometimes in Year 2 where they will learn different graphemes and the corresponding phonemes to help them build words and blend them to enable the children to read. Go through the correct pronunciation of the phonemes with the parents and the impact this has on the children’s ability to make sure the words are blended to sound like the actual word. Show examples on the whiteboard with the inclusion of sound buttons. Highlight the fact that diagraphs and trigraphs need to be seen as one sound rather than two/three letters. Explain to the parents, that the expectation is that the children come into Year 3 knowing the graphemes and are able to decode. However, should any children have difficulty, they are given intervention in order to accelerate their learning.

Split digraph Adjacent Consonant (e.g. make) A digraph in which the two letters making the sound are not adjacent (e.g. make) Adjacent Consonant Explain what these are. Consonants next to each other in a word that make their own sound e.g. went, thump, burnt, helper

Homographs Wind the bobbin up! She will read it to her little brother. The wind blew the leaves off the trees. You have to bow when you meet the queen. He read about the frightening monster. Robin Hood used a bow and arrow. Read saying incorrect pronunciation and check for sense. Children need to use trial and error, so let them have a go at reading it with the grapheme having a different sound. As a parent facilitate this rather than giving them the correct word. Ask the children, does that make sense? Have you heard that word before?

Sound Families Talk about the fact letters make different sounds in different places in words. Give examples.

Show the impact of sounding out every word and how it can break the children’s understanding. Model the reading recovery model of reading to ensure the children comprehend their sentences. Highlight also the high frequency words and how these can help also. Talk about other strategies that can be used – refer to booklet of Afs.

Reading with awareness of punctuation. Talk about initially getting the children to actually say the word full stop when they see one, then move to saying it in their head and eventually they will do it automatically. Emphasise the ? And ! And the use of speech marks. The expectation for Year 3 is that they are reading with attention to the punctuation and that they develop their fluency and intonation as they move into Year 4. They will only develop this by reading aloud to an adult or having a book read to them. Perhaps the parents could read one page and the child read another – thus making the reading at home faster but also modelling the correct way to pay attention to the punctuation when reading.

Which AF? AF2 “Woof! Woof!” questions AF3 “Hmm…..” questions AF4 “Sort it! Sort it!” questions Which AF? AF6 “Write, write, yippee, boo hoo!” questions AF5 “Gabble, gabble!” questions AF7 “To boldly go” questions Explain to the parents that in order to help the children develop all the skills and strategies to be a well rounded reader, we look at a range of different Afs we have given them names and actions. Work with the parents through the different actions and explain that the significance of both the actions and names will become clearer as they become more familiar with the

Assessment Focus 2: understand, describe, select or retrieve information, events or ideas from texts and use quotation and reference to text Share that these are simply questions which focus on the children retrieving information from the text. As a parent ask your child a question and then ask them to PROVE the answer by finding it directly in the text.

Assessment Focus 3: deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts Deduce: Infer: a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning. Highlight that we are not necessarily given the answers we have to guess at them based on what we read. Refer to the booklet with the parent. Parent activity: Look at the photocopy of page 8 and 9 of Mrs Maginty – What does this tell us about Dad’s feeling towards his parents? Using one of the books on the table think of other AF3 questions you could use using the booklet to help you. Share with a partner.

‘Adara liked the winter best of all, for when the world grew cold the ice dragon came.’ Explain that this was the opening sentence of the text, on the very first page. This was used to develop the children’s predictions. The children were asked to predict what they think will happen in the story based on the above quotation from the text. They were also asked to think about what Adara and the ice dragon’s relationship was like and why they though this based on this opening sentence. Initially, the children predicted that the dragon chased after Adara and tried to kill her but then when they were encouraged to really think about the words used, they then began to change their predictions.

Title: Secrets in the Snow ‘Adara’s smiles were a secret store, and she spent most of them only in the winter. She could hardly wait for her birthday to come and with it the cold. For in the winter she was a special child.’ Using the title of chapters to predict. – What might the secrets be? What else do we find out about Adara? Why would she become a special child in the winter? Look at the way the author used different sentence starters.

Assessment Focus 4: identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level Highlight to the parents how we are constantly looking at these features throughout all our children’s reading experiences and that those children who like to look at non-fiction books beyond their reading capabilities can still develop these skills. Engagement in the books is vital. Highlight also the importance of the use of subheadings and skimming and scanning for information. Explain that this is easier with non-fiction texts. Ask the parents to look at the non-fiction texts – Microbes text as an example. Discuss the layout the different features that you would expect to find. Using the non-fiction text of their choice ask the parents to use the booklet to consider the types of questions they could ask their child.

Assessment Focus 5: explain and comment on writers’ use of language, including grammatical and literary features at word and sentence level Refer to the booklet once again. Emphasise that we can not presume that the children actually understand the words they read. We must always check to see if they understand the meaning of words. Use of a piece of paper or whiteboard for jotting new words down. In a non-fiction text this may be the use of technical language, a play on words but in fiction it needs to be really unpicked. Ask the parents to consider what they would pick out of the text to make reference to and think of some questions.

‘The ice dragon was crystalline white, that shade of white that is so hard and cold that it is almost blue. It is covered with hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man’s boots, and flakes of grime fell off.’

‘She had never seen beasts quite like these ‘She had never seen beasts quite like these. Their scales were dark and sooty, not green like the dragon Hal rode. One was a rust colour and one was the shade of dried blood and one was black as coal. All of them had eyes like glowing embers, and steam rose from their nostrils, and their tails flicked back and forth as their dark, leathery wings beat the air. The rust-coloured one opened its mouth and roared, and the forest shook to its challenge, and even the branch that held Adara trembled just a little. The black one made a noise too, and when it opened its maw a spear of flame lanced out, all orange and blue, and touched the trees below. Leaves withered and blackened, and smoke began to rise from where the dragon’s breath had fallen.’ Discuss the introduction of new vocabulary – that the text should stretch their vocabulary and children should question and collect new words to add to their understanding. Don’t presume the children understand the vocabulary. Collect it and then give them the opportunity to use it in a range of contexts. When sharing reading experiences, make note and a teaching point good examples of language and sentence structure.

Assessment Focus 6: identify and comment on writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the overall effect of the text on the reader Having an emotional response to the text. Look at the question booklet. Explain that this does not need to be a book read by the children themselves but one that is shared with an adult. Think about when you are reading a new novel. Are you constantly asking yourselves questions?

Assessment Focus 7: relate texts to their social, cultural and historical traditions Stories with morals Learning about different cultures –What do we learn about the culture/setting? Highlight that again these skills can be developed whilst being read to the children rather than a book they read themselves. Traditional tales and the features – good over evil, the number 3 etc

The ability to read the words on the page is only the tip of the iceberg. Reiterate that the ability to read words is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are any other reading skills which need to equally be developed. Really emphasise the fact that some of these skills can be developed whilst a book is being read to the children rather than them reading it themselves. Highlight that we really consider all these AFs before we move the children on in their reading level.