Reading in the Early Years

1. Reading in the Early Years

2. What are your memories of reading at a young age? What were your favourite stories? How many stories could you retell without a book?

3. When did you last listen to your child read? When did you last read to/share a book with your child? When did your child last see you read?

4. Who’s job is it to teach your child to read? • ?

5. “Teaching your child to read is one of the most rewarding challenges a parent or carer can undertake. A parent is a child's primary teacher in their most formative years and therefore nothing should be more natural than developing your child's joy of learning to read.”

6. STATEMENTS ABOUT READING “Reading is the foundation of a successful education.” “When children struggle in learning to read, they often struggle in other subjects as well.” Mary Leonhardt ( author) “Children learn to read and learn to love reading by…Reading, Reading, and Reading some more.”“This could be the best gift you ever give your child”. “Avid readers acquire their love of reading at home, from their parents. No teacher can pass along a passion for books the way a loving mother or father can. Good readers remember cosy bed time stories, sharing books with friends and siblings, and most importantly, the freedom and encouragement to read whatever they wanted to.”

7. What Are Some Ways To Encourage School-Age Readers?

8. Continue being a good role model. Let your child see you read.

9. Keep a variety of reading materials in the house. Make sure to have books that are interesting to your child as well as for reference. • Have some books the children can read for themselves, some they need a little support with, and some for you to read. • Encourage them to have favourite books. • Make sure there is a good reading light in your child's room and stock her bookshelves with books and magazines that are easy to both read and reach.

10. Encourage your child to read on theirown at home. Reading at home can help your child do better in school.

11. Encourage activities that require reading. Cooking (reading a recipe), constructing a kite (reading directions), or identifying a bird's nest or a shell at the beach (reading a reference book) are some examples.

12. Establish a reading time, even if it's only 10 minutes each day. Encourage your child to practice reading aloud and praise them as much as possible. Offer to read every other page. Have conversations and discussions about the book with your child.

13. Talk with your child. Talking makes children think about their experiences more and helps them expand their vocabularies. Ask your child to give detailed descriptions of events and to tell complete stories.

14. Have your child tell you stories they make up or retell stories they have read or heard.

15. Give your child writing materials. Reading and writing go hand in hand. Children want to learn to write and to practice writing. If you make pencils, crayons, and paper available at all times, your child will be more inclined to initiate writing activities on his own.

16. Restrict television/computer time.The less time your child spends watching television/playing on computer gadgets, the more time he will have for reading-related activities.

17. Visit the library on a regular basis.Have your child apply for her own library card so she can check out books on her own for schoolwork and for pleasure reading. Ask your child to bring home a library book to read to a younger sibling and encourage her to check out books on tape that she can listen to on long car trips.

18. How do children learn to read? • Picture cues • Their life experiences Sight vocabulary Phonics

19. Phonics • BLENDING • Recognising the letter sounds in a written word, for example • c-u-p • and merging or ‘blending’ them in the order in which they are • written to pronounce the word ‘cup’ • Once children are good with single phonemes… • DIGRAPHS – 2 letters that make 1 sound • llsszzoaai • TRIGRAPHS – 3 letters that make 1 sound • igh

20. Letters and sound Phase 1 – lots of auditory exercises to get children ready to learn letter sounds. (F.S.1) Phase 2 – 19 letters sounds taught and some tricky words ( 6 weeks) Phase 3 – remaining letter sounds taught and more tricky words plus one grapheme for each remaining phoneme taught. ( 12 weeks) Phase 4 – consolidation of phase 3. More tricky words CCVC/ CVCC words. ( end of Reception) Phase 5 –alternative spelling for phonemes and more tricky words. ( throughout Year1) Phase 6 – Tenses, prefixes and suffixes. ( Year 2)

21. KEY words • Words that are not phonically decodeable. • e.g. was, the, I • Some are ‘tricky’ to start with but will become decodeable once we have learned the harder phonemes. • e.g. out, hair

22. Pictures cues • Children look at pictures in books to help read unknown words. • ‘The balloon is blue’.

23. Life experiences • ‘The dog is in the kennel’. • Children make sense of the text using their life experiences. • e.g knowing what a dog lives in will help decode the last word.

24. What to do with the reading book. • Look at the front cover and ask your child what they think the book might be about and why?( prediction skills) Refer back to their ideas at the end to see if they were right. • Ask your child to point to the title. Can they sound the words out? Do they know any tricky words?

25. Encourage your child to look at the picture before reading the text so that they get an understanding of what is happening. Encourage them to sound out unfamiliar words using their phonic knowledge, unless they are ‘tricky words’, which need to be learnt by sight. Encourage your child to point to the words as they read them to ensure they are not relying on memory alone if having read the book before. Point out the speech bubbles and discuss what they are. How might the characters say their words? Encourage your child to adapt their voice, with you modelling this if necessary. Talk about the story setting. Where are they? How do they know?

26. DURING THE BOOK • Discuss what might happen next, and why, before turning the page. Again, reward your child if their ideas were correct or plausible. • Continue reading the book, talking about the pictures or story as necessary. • Ask questions about the story, to check your child’s understanding of what they have read. • What next? • Encourage your child to re read the book at another time, to help them gain in confidence. How do they cope with the text a second time? • Fill in your child’s diary so that the teacher can see they have read. If possible write a short comment to say how they got on. ( see sheet for ideas)

27. Phonics Games • Ask your child to go on a phoneme(letter) hunt around the house/garden for new sounds they are learning. W = water bottles, wellies, wii console, watering cans, window etc. Give them a ‘post it’ to stick on with the letter sound. • Play ‘I spy with my little eye’. • Using the letter sounds your child has been learning in school, scatter them around on a table or floor and then make a word using some of them. Can your child sound out the letters and then blend them to make a word? • Ask your child to spell a word in the same manner. Can they segment the word to find the letters (Phonemes)?

28. READING TO YOUR CHILD • Once your child has read to you, or at another time, read to your child. • ‘Reading to your child on a regular basis, especially at a young age, is just as crucial in helping them develop skills as a reader’. • Choosing the book. • Your child may have selected a library book from school or the local library. • Follow your child’s interests. • Consider the length of the book and the appropriateness.

29. Discuss the front cover – What do they think the book might be about ? Can they give reasons for their ideas? ( prediction/ reasoning skills) What can they tell you about the picture? E.g It’s Winter time( snowing), there’s a hedgehog, hedgehogs don’t usually wear woolly hats. Does your child know that the hedgehog should be hibernating?

30. Stop at various points in a story and ask the child what might happen next ( prediction skills).

31. Can you see a /find a ….? ( skimming and scanning)

32. Read stories with repetitive sentences e.g ‘The Gingerbread Man’, ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’, and encourage your child to join in with the repetitive parts.

33. Read stories or poems that rhyme. Can they hear the rhyming words?

34. Some stories are great to add sound effects too e.g‘Peace at Last’. Get children to make sounds to accompany the story as you read it using vocal and/or body sounds.

35. Talk about the elements of a story – characters, setting, beginning, middle and end so that children become familiar with the structure of a story.

36. Read stories that introduce new vocabulary to helps develop children’s language. Ensure the children understand what the words mean.

37. Story vocab – Once upon a time…. Read a range of books, that interest your child. Fairy tales, Traditional tales, Cartoon characters. Stories about different seasons.

38. FACTUAL BOOKS Does your child understand the difference between a ‘fiction’ and a ‘non-fiction’ (fact) text? Do they know what kind of book it will be by looking at the front cover?

39. CONTENTS PAGE • Contents Pages are at the front of the book. They tell you the topics covered in page order.

40. INDEX Index pages, at the back of the book, have ‘key words’ in alphabetical order.

41. OTHer activities to aid reading skills. • puppets