Reading at Home
The support you give your children in beginning to read is extremely important and therefore
we encourage you to readily and regularly share books with them. It is important that reading
is fun and therefore we suggest short relaxed sessions of reading.
Reading doesn’t just have to involve stories, it could be helping you to finding a number in a
telephone book, reading labels in the supermarket or traffic signs. This will also support your
child to understand that marks mean something, that they represent the words and sentences
we speak.
Hearing and saying rhymes is great for learning to read as it helps children to listen to the
pattern of language.
Your child may initially bring home books with pictures only. Encourage your child to ‘read’
what is happening in the pictures. Prompt them to tell you a sentence about what is happening.
These books help children to practise the skill of telling stories.
Once your child is ready we will send home books from our reading scheme, these books will
focus on phonemes and key words your child has been learning at school. They are also
encouraged to select a book each day from the class library.
Strategies for reading:
Encourage your child to use their phonic knowledge to sound out each word e.g. c-a-t,
t-a-p. You can help your child by saying the phonemes getting faster each time and
then blend the phonemes together to say the word, e.g. s-a-t, s-a-t, sat.
Encourage your child to use picture clues to help decode the words they are unsure of.
Encourage your child to read on in the sentence to try and work out unknown words.
Discuss and ask your child about the story/book to ensure they have understood what
they have read.
Ask them to predict what the story might be about, using the title.
Relate stories, where possible, to their own experiences.
Ask your child what they liked/disliked about the book.
Finally have lots of fun sharing books together!