Reading
Leicestershire Libraries Newsletter - Issue 1 - 2024
Leicestershire Libraries Newsletter - December 2023
Reading Information for Parents
Your child's reading experience is much more than the reading book which comes home from school. Reading is happening all the time in a classroom and in the school. It is taught in specific reading and English lessons, but children are practising and using their 'reading' constantly across all subjects too.
At Orchard we ask that parents support this work that is done in the classroom as it can make a dramatic difference to a child's achievement within school. Try to read at least 3 x a week with your child. Children who have a signed reading record 3 x in a week receive a reading token, 5 x a week and they receive 2 tokens. These tokens are then collected and 5 are drawn out at the end of each term for those children to receive a book token. At the end of the year there is an additional prize which includes a family cinema ticket or family day out passes.
Top tips for reading with your child at home, including:
- Make time to read- even if it is only for ten minutes (Daily is better)
- Choose different types of books
- Take turns to read
- Talk about the book- asking your child questions
- Pay attention to the language
- Enjoy reading
Learning To Read At Orchard
Children learn to read in different ways and at different ages. The first part of a child's journey towards being a successful reader starts when the child is a baby and is listening to stories and rhymes. This encourages a love of language and stories and develops the child's vocabulary and understanding of language as they start to become familiar with what words mean and what they look like.
A vital first stage of a child's development as a reader is to be able to 'read' pictures and to determine what is happening or to predict what might happen from the pictures in a book. As this skill develops, children become able to use their grammatical skills to listen to words within a sentence and to make sense of what they can hear. This is an important tool for the young reader as it enables them to make sensible guesses at unknown words within a sentence and to continue to read for meaning without being stopped in their tracks.
Teaching Phonics at Orchard
We ensure that all children in our Foundation Stage, year 1 and those in year 2 who have failed the Year 1 phonics are taught phonic skills through Read Write Inc. This develops the child's ability to tackle unknown words within a text by blending the phonemes (sounds) within the word. These phonic skills also enable a child to work out the phonemes they will need to use when they are writing words.
The phonic lessons are structured to ensure that children are first able to identify letters and to say the sound those letters make. Once children are confident with saying the single letter sounds and blending them to create words, they then start to learn the common digraphs (where two letters go together to create a new phoneme such as sh), trigraphs (where three letters create a new phoneme such as igh) and spelling patterns that we use within the English language.
Reading in Years 2-6
Children in Year 2 and Key Stage 2 will continue their reading journey through individual reading, small group guided reading session and as part of daily English lessons
Orchard Reading key aims
At Orchard, the key objectives in our phonic, reading and writing lessons are that children are taught to:.
- love books and enjoy listening to stories, poems and rhymes
- read and write letter-sound correspondences quickly
- decode effortlessly, spell and handwrite easily
- comprehend what they read
- read with fluency and expression
- write confidently using oral rehearsal
- work effectively with a partner or within a group to articulate their learning at every step
Please find below the Powerpoint presentation from our Phonics meetings
Online Reading
Whilst we all like to have a book to hold to be able to share with others the content and pictures, often children seem more interested in their tablet or computer. We can now do both by reading on line, Below are some websites that offer reading on line, some also have games related to the book or text that they are reading.
Wordless Books
Do you remember learning to read when the books were just pictures? You used the pictures to imagine what might be happening. Wordless books are pictures where you can look at them over and over again making your own stories up, changing what is happening each time. Click here for the list of wordless books suggested by The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
