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Ward Green Primary School TOP TIPS! A guide to reading at home

At Ward Green we are EXTREMELY passionate about reading and developing a love of reading. You might be wondering how you can also help to develop this at home. Here are some reading TOP TIPS! which can be used at home.

What can i do as a parent/ carer?

  • Read with your child every day or as often as you can. Make a routine for example, before bed. Find a place where your child feels safe and cosy and snuggle up. It might help to turn off the TV, so you can really listen and talk to your child.
  • Ensure your child brings their school reading book EVERY DAY. This is so important and ensures adults can listen to your child read and change their book when required.
  • Read a range of texts e.g school books, classic stories, ingredients, shopping lists, leaflets that come through the post- the possibilities are endless!
  • Point out words in every day life for example- place names and logos.
  • Talk about the letters in your child's name and find them in other places.
  • Give your child a wide variety of texts to choose from- Barnsley library has a huge book selection. Allow your child to pick out books that interest them.
  • Involve all the family and talk about how special reading with them is.

Chat and discuss! the content and meaning of books is an important part of reading. Chat about the book before, during and after. Here are some example questions you could ask...

What is happening? What can you see? Relate to things that have happened to them. e.g if there is a castle say ' wow look at the castle. Can you remember the time we went to the castle- What happened? What else did we see?'

Explore the meaning of words. Use a dictionary to help if needed.

Make predictions. What do you think will happen next?

Discuss feelings. Why are the characters feeling that way? What has happened?

Discuss the problem and resolution. What went wrong? How did it get resolved?

Read it again and again! Go ahead and read your child's favourite book for the 100th time!

  • During reading
  • Track print- whilst reading encourage your child to point to the print with their finger.
  • Encourage your child to read with expression e.g voices of different characters.
  • Discuss the punctuation on the page e.g. exclamation marks ! Ask what these are for and what should you do when you see one?
  • You do not always have to read an entire book every night. You could even focus on 2 pages and talk about the characters, setting and plot in a lot of detail. You might want to take it in turns to read so your child can hear how you read.

Phonics

Your child will be sent home with two Read Write Inc (RWI) reading books that are carefully matched to your childs phonics level. These books will contain sounds ( phonemes) that your child is currently confident working with and has learnt during their daily phonics lesson. These could be single sounds e.g. m, a, s, d, t or digraphs/ trigraphs ( two or three letters that go together to make one sound e.g. sh, ch, igh. The sounds ( phonemes) are introduced in the following order. When saying the sound it is important to say the sounds correctly. Here are some top tips how to say the sounds and the order they are taught.

Set 1

m: mmmmmountain (keep lips pressed together hard)

s: ssssssnake ( keep teeth together and hiss- unvoiced)

a: a-a-a (open mouth wide as if to take a bite of an apple)

d: ( tap tongue behind teeth)

i: (make a sharp sound at the back of your throat- like in smile)

n: nnnnet( keep tongue behind teeth)

p: make distinctive p with lips (unvoiced)

g: make soft sound in throat

o: o-o-o ( make mouth into an o shape, push out lips)

e: e-e-e ( release mouth slightly from a postion)

k: (make sharp click at the back of throat)

u: u-u-u ( make a sound in the back of throat)

b: (make a short strong b with lips)

f: fffflower ( keep teeth on bottom lip and force air out sharply.

c: ( make sharp click at the back of throat)

l: llleg keep pointed curled tongue behind teeth)

h: ( say h as you breathe out sharply unvoiced)

sh: shh( Make a sh noise as though you are telling somebody to be quiet

r: rrrrobot ( say r as if you are growling)

j: ( push lips forward)

v: vvvvultrure ( keep teeth on bottom lip and force air out gently)

y: ( keep edges of tongue against teeth)

w: ( keep lips tightly pursed)

th: thhhhank you ( stick out tongue and breathe out sharply)

z: zzzig zzag ( keep together and make a buzzing sound)

ch: ( make a short sneezing sound)

qu: ( keep lips pursed as you say cw- unvoiced)

x: (say a sharp c and add s unvoiced)

ng: thinnnngg on a strinnnng ( curl your tongue at the back of your throat)

nk: I think I stink ( make a piggy oink noise without the oi! nk nk nk)

Segmenting and blending

Your child can then use these sounds to segment and blend words e.g. d-o-g = dog, sh-i-p = ship, b-r-igh-t= bright. This is the basis of reading and is a very important skill.

Set 2

When your child learns the set 2/ set 3 sounds -digraphs/ trigraphs ( two or three letters that go together to make one sound) they are taught in the following order and have a rhyme to match which can help the children remember. It is important that your child does not pronounce these as two seperate sounds but two letters that go together to make one sound e.g. ch- o- p = chop.

These are :

ay- may I play, ee- what can you see, igh- fly high, ow- blow the snow, oo- poo at the zoo, oo- look at the book, ar- start the car, or- shut the door, air- that's not fair, ir- whirl and twirl, ou- shout it out, oy- toy for a boy.

Set 3

When learning set 3 sounds they will be taught that there are more than one ways in which the same sounds are written. For example ee as in tree and ea as in cup of tea. Again, these are digraphs/ trigraphs ( two or three letters that go together to make one sound) so it is important that the children do not say the individual letters but the sound together e.g. c-oi-n= coin.

ea- cup of tea, oi- spoil the boy, a-e- make a cake, i-e- nice smile, o-e- phone home, u-e- hige brute, aw- yawn at the dawn, are- share and care, ur- purse for a nurse, er- a better letter, ow- brown cow, ai- snail in the rain, oa- goat in a boat, ew- chew the stew, ire- fire fire, ear- hear with your ear, ure- sure it's pure?, tion- celebration, tious/ cious (scrumptious/ delicious)

There are also irregular words ( tricky words/ red words ) that the children cannot segment and blend as they do not follow normal spelling patterns. The children learn to read and recognise these by sight during lessons and when reading books.

These are just some summarised top tips to help support your child at home with reading but if you require any more support please do not hesitate to speak to your childs class teacher who is always available to help. Further information can also be found on our website regarding Ward Green Primary Schools approach to early reading.

Reading is dreaming with open eyes