1. Reception Reading Workshop
Please Sign in on the
sheet at the front

2. Welcome and Introduction
Support at home makes a difference
What we will cover
Welcome to the evening
Children have settled really well- staff impressed with how settled and ready to learn the children are.
Thank you for your support during the transition period- not easy juggling work commitments but it does help the children having a gradual start- I bet most were tired after last week. Questionnaire shortly- will help us to improve our starting arrangements.
Aims of workshop: To give you an overview of how we work at school to teach reading and how you can support this process at home.
8th Reading workshop- the rest of school is now also doing a reading workshop for each Key Stage to focus on reading as children get older and the different challenges they may face.

3. Support at Home How to encourage your child to read Read yourself
Keep books safe
Point out words all around you
Visit the library
Make time to read
Keep in touch with school
Dual language books
“One in five parents easily find the opportunity to read to their children, with the rest struggling to read to their children due to fatigue and busy lifestyles. Of the parents that read to the children, 67% are mothers compared to just 17% of fathers”- National Literacy Trust
2Parents are the most important reading role models for their children and young people. 71% of young people say that their mothers are their most important role model for reading and 62% say their fathers.”

4. How to help with reading
Be positive
Avoid distractions
Give your child time
Follow the words
Don’t make your child try too hard!
Let your child read favourites
Ask lots of questions
Don’t read for too long

5. Assessment targets for Reading
At the end of Reception, children are assessed against 17 Early Learning Goals. Children are judged to be ‘Emerging’, ‘Expected’ or ‘Exceeding’ for each goal. Here is the Reading goal that your child will be assessed against at the end of the year: “Children read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read.” As you can see, reading is not just about decoding! It is about the child's understanding of what they have read and their ability to communicate this understanding.

6. Questions To Ask
Let's look at the front/back cover - what can you see?
Do you think this is going to be a fiction (story) book or a non fiction (information book) - why?
What do you think the story is going to be about?
Let's read the blurb for clues.
Point out the author and the illustrator. What does the author do? What does the illustrator do?
What do you think will happen next?
What happened at the beginning/middle/end of the story?
Did you think that was a good ending to the story? Why? Was it happy and sad - why?
Who was your favourite character - why?
Which page did happen?
Where was the story set?

7. Don't forget to encourage your child to read ahead for punctuation.!
“ “ . ! …
It will help your child to read with appropriate expression.

8. Reading Non Fiction Books
Ask your child to look to see if the book has some features of a non fiction text
photographs
contents page
index page
labels
captions
Encourage your child to use the contents/index page to find out information from the book.

9. How is reading taught in school?
shared reading - a whole class story
guided reading - 6 children reading the same book with a teacher or teaching assistant
individual reading - an individual child reading to the teacher
Daily phonics lesson
High Frequency Words
Accelerated Reader

10. Things to remember:
Never cover the pictures up. They are an integral part of the story and they are a valid strategy for decoding words.
Don't just read your child's reading book from school.
Make use of:
the local library
comics
more challenging bedtime stories
encourage your child to choose their own story - don't question their choices

11. What is Phonics? In Phonics sessions the children are:
Learning letters and phonemes (sounds)
Singing songs
Reading words
Spelling words
Writing phrases and sentences

12. Letters and Sounds
We are introducing the children to the phonemes and graphemes (the sounds), letter formation (the shape and direction) and how to blend and segment words (build and split when reading and writing)
We follow a document produced by the government, and use a variety of schemes such as Letterland to help your child develop these skills.

13. How do we introduce a phoneme?

14. How do we introduce a phoneme?
For example the phoneme d
This is from the Letterland Scheme. We enjoy singing the song, and the song and story help us to remember the sound.
It is important for the children to associate the sound with it’s letter shape.
We practise the letter formation, drawing the letter shape in the air.
We introduce the capital letter shape and talk about different text styles.

15. English – a complicated language
A phoneme is a sound in a word, and is not necessarily one letter. e.g. ‘c’ in cat ‘o’ in dog ‘sh’ in fish ‘igh’ in light
A phoneme can be represented in more than one way. e.g. sad circle day snail cat kennel choir

16. English – a complicated language
A grapheme is a letter or sequence of letters that represent a phoneme. The way we write the sounds down. e.g. knight letters (kn) 3 letters (igh) 1 letter (t)
The same grapheme may represent more than one phoneme e.g. me met

17. Using phonics in reading
When reading we spot trickier phonemes and graphemes before blending the sounds. e.g. shop cheep
We use clear pronunciation as we blend.
We can rehearse the sounds (talking like a robot) before we blend.

18. Using phonics in reading
We repeat the phonemes, getting them to run into each other e.g. m – a – t
If they know a word when reading they do not have to blend it.
It is a good idea to re-read the sentence without blending to aid comprehension.

19. Using phonics in writing
We listen for the phonemes (sounds) in each word, as we develop we hear, recognise and use more phonemes. e.g. house
h initial sound
hs - initial and final sounds
hows – dominant sounds
hous – knowing which version of ou / ow to use
house – using phonic and word memory skills

20. Using phonics in writing
In Reception we are building up our phonic skills each week.
We let the children spell phonetically to build confidence as an independent writer.
If they ask us how to spell a word, we will ask them what they can hear.

21. Using phonics in writing
The children use sound sheets to help them find the letters that match the phoneme they hear.
When your child is ready we will be talking about tricky words and how to spell them. e.g. was to the

22. Differentiating Phonics
Phonics is held as a class session while we are tackling the first seven sets of sounds.
We will then be assessing your child’s recognition, blending, segmenting and spelling skills. This will help us to target our program of work to meet their individual needs.

23. Differentiating Phonics
After the assessment the phonics sessions will be splitting into smaller groups:
Some children will need to recap over sets 1-7 to ensure clear pronunciation and instant recognition.
Some will need to practise using their phonic knowledge with blending activities.
Some will be ready to meet new sound phonemes and graphemes.
Others may even be ready to tackle higher level phonic skills.

24. Differentiating Phonics
Our assessment is continuous and the groups are very flexible.
Please do not worry if your child is finding it hard to remember letter shapes, or struggles to blends their sounds together. Some children find particular skills more challenging than others. We will provide a range of activities for your child to practise their skills, and are happy to offer guidance and support, for you to help at home.

25. Thank you for coming!
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use to reading at all.”
Oscar Fingal Wilde
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons