Reading at Home
Cam Woodfield Junior School
Reading at Home An Information eBooklet for Parents
H.Dean February 2013
Cam Woodfield Junior School Reading at Home
Reading has been a success at Cam Woodfield Junior School for many years. Much of this success can be attributed to the support and encouragement that children are given from reading with parents and carers at home. Young people who read outside of class daily are 13 times more likely to read above the expected level than those that do not. National Literacy Trust 2012 All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Draft National Curriculum 2013
We want our pupils to be enthusiastic, independent readers who develop the habit of reading widely and often, both for enjoyment and information. We need them to be confident and daring, to enjoy books, to talk about the books they read and to have an opinion about them. We need them to know that reading is an essential life long skill which is for everyone. Helping your child to develop a love of reading now, will help them to develop as independent readers and learners for the rest of their lives as well as discover a world where they can develop culturally, emotionally, spiritually and socially. This booklet aims to help you to support your child with reading at home to become a confident, independent and fluent reader.
HOW TO MAKE READING AT HOME A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE 1. Choose a quiet time Make reading time a routine which you stick to. Turn off the phone and TV to minimise interruptions. Give this time some importance. 2. Make reading enjoyable Sit together. Get involved with the reading material. Discuss the book. Share the book. Take it in turns to read if your child is reluctant. Model expression: use funny voices. Feign excitement, surprise, wonderment or horror if necessary. Ask what they think? 3. Maintain the flow Reading is not a test! If a word is mispronounced, pause to give them time to self-correct. Tell them unknown words to maintain the flow. If they try to sound out a word, encourage the use of letter sounds (phonemes). Prompt. Ask: What do you know about that word? Perhaps they see a familiar letter string or they can spot a word within a more complicated word. If your child inserts a word which is not entirely correct but makes sense, don’t stop them. They have shown that they are making meaning from the text. Take over for a while if they are struggling. Concentrate on enjoyment, grasping the meaning and maintaining the flow. Praise. 4. Be positive Boost confidence with constant specific praise, eg: ‘Well done for having a go!’ ‘I like the way you tried to sound out the word.’ ‘That was really good when you self-corrected because you knew that it didn’t make sense.’ That was very effective expression.’ I like the way that you made it sound like a question, you really noticed the punctuation.’ ‘I like the way that you didn’t give up.’ 5. Nothing succeeds like success If your child wants to read a book again or read an easier book this will help them enjoy reading and to see themselves as good readers. Until they have built their confidence this is better than struggling with a book with many unknown words- this is counterproductive- flow is lost, meaning is lost and confidence is lost. Reading at a manageable independent level aids understanding and promotes fluency especially if the book has been read several times. 6. Regular practice Children learn to read by reading. Little and often, ideally everyday, at a minimum, three times a week for 10-15 minutes.
7. Talk about the books Reading can often be perceived as a silent and solitary activity and this turns many children off. Talk helps to make reading meaningful and sociable and can be a very successful way of engaging children, particularly boys. Children's oral language skills are crucial to their development as readers and writers. Talk helps all learners to shape and articulate their thoughts, engage with texts, question texts, and gather ideas for writing their own texts. Boys in particular benefit from sharing and reinforcing their thoughts and ideas through talk.
Ask lots of questions. Give them time to respond, discuss and to give their opinions. This shows their understanding, helps develop comprehension skills and shows their enjoyment. Can you guess what is going to happen next? What happened in the story? Does this story remind you of any thing that has happened to you? Does it remind you of anything you have read before? Did you think the book was funny? Did you spot any interesting words and phrases? Did you enjoy the book? Why? Why not? Who was your favourite character? Why? Which part did you like the best? Why? Was there any part you didn’t like? Why? Would you choose this book/story again? What would you have done if you were…….?
8. Communicate- the Reading Record Book Please affirm your child’s reading by writing a comment in their Reading Record Book. This helps us to monitor progress – when we are putting extra resources, time and effort toward boosting children’s reading we need to know to what extent it is backed up at home for maximum impact. A housepoint is awarded each time this is done. What to write? Examples might include: ‘Great expression’, ‘We talked about the story’, ‘We discussed the characters’, ’Super fluent reading’, ‘We laughed at the bit when..’, ‘…read with confidence’, ‘We acted out the playscript together’, ‘…is enjoying this author’, ‘We read it 5 times!’ etc.
9. Variety is the spice To see that there are different purposes for reading and to extend the range, encourage your child to read a variety of material: picture books ( often language and discussion rich), e-books, comics, poetry, magazines, newspapers, web pages, jokes, recipes, instructions, catalogues, information books.
10. Use the public library It’s free! Your child can explore different types of books and discover new authors. Audio books can let your child experience books which they couldn’t manage on their own.
Always end your reading session on a high note.
READING STRATEGIES WHICH WILL HELP 1. Be a reading role model Read aloud to your child. Go to town with expression and funny voices, talk about what you have just read - you thought it was funny, they liked the way the author said something, you liked that idea. Talk about any part of the story, the characters, the setting, the words, what might happen next, what you are reminded of etc. Hearing stories read aloud enables the processes of reading comprehension and language development without the additional task of decoding. Talk about your own reading. Your positive attitude to reading and uses of reading for real purposes, including enjoyment and information, are the most powerful demonstrations you can give.
2. Uninterrupted reading Remember that the most important aspect of reading is constructing meaning. Interruptions interrupt that construction of meaning. There’s no need to stop for a small mistake if meaning is still being made.
3. Skip and go on to make meaning To become independent readers, children need to be encouraged to take a risk with a word. Mistakes are OK – that’s the way we learn. Perhaps after a brief sounding out attempt, ask them to skip the unknown word and read on to try to gain the meaning through the context of the rest of that sentence or maybe several of the following sentences, to help determine the unknown word. Or, suggest that they reread the previous part of the text to help find the meaning of the unknown word. Hearing the rest of the sentence, or the beginning of the sentence again, may provide enough information to give a clue to the unknown word. This is an automatic strategy used by efficient and proficient readers. Since reading is a meaning construction process, knowing how to say the word is much less important than knowing what the sentence says in this particular context.
4. Predict to make sense Try covering up the unknown word and ask your child to predict a substitute word that would make sense. There may be enough context in the first part of the sentence for them to predict a meaningful substitution. If not, read the rest of the sentence to gain more meaning from context to help predict the unknown word.
5. Use a word or line guide Using a word or line guide such as a bookmark, lollipop stick or finger to help them stay on track with the text as they read, can help readers who have trouble focusing on lines of text or get distracted when there are several lines. This focus on phrases or chunks of language may help with fluency and will also focus on the beginning sound, which will help with predictions more than middle or end sounds do.
6. Retelling At any suitable stopping point, ask your child to retell what they have read. Ask what they think might happen next. This retelling strategy will give you a good indication whether your child has understood. Try to ask more than surface level questions; the more readers are asked to retell, the better they will become at expecting to read for meaning.
7. Encourage fluency by rereading Children may sometimes choose a book that they have read before or that you may consider too easy for them, but it is important that they are given these opportunities to build confidence and allow them to show off what they can do!
8. Reading together Echo reading- the child's voice is close behind the adult’s voice as they read a favourite book or try out a new piece, or partner reading - the child and the adult could read a piece in a duet- are both strategies that can help your child become more fluent in reading and move toward becoming an independent reader.
9. Reading to others Encourage your child to read to younger children. Record them reading aloud to help them to hear their reading voice and to think about how they could improve expression and fluency so that it can be understood by their listening audience.
10.Use a dictionary Buy a simple dictionary and use it to check the meanings of new words.
11. If English is not your family’s first language You can buy dual language books. You can talk about books and stories in any language.
PAUSE to help them work out the new words PROMPT by using some of the techniques mentioned PRAISE them for trying whether they are right or wrong
Supporting the confident reader It is still important to read with your child even when they have become more confident readers. Do continue to read aloud to them to enable access to texts and language which is too challenging to read alone and encourage them to read aloud to you to maintain and develop intonation and expression. Confident readers may reach the stage where they no longer wish to read aloud to an adult so often and want to read silently to themselves. Sustained reading for extended periods is to be encouraged. To ensure that the child's reading development continues to move forward, we would encourage parents to question the child about what they are reading, to extend their reading understanding and share their enjoyment of the book.
Questions to ask... What is the title of the book? What kind of book is it? (Fiction, non fiction, poetry, short story etc) Who is the author/illustrator? Have you read any other books by the same author? What made you choose this book? (Author, cover, illustration, recommendation, interesting blurb etc) Have you read this book before? Why have you chosen it again? Questions to ask before your child resumes their book... What has happened so far? What do you think will happen next? What are the clues that make you think this? How would you like the story to end? Do you feel involved in the story? Why? Where is the story set? Is there a description? When is the story set? (Past, present, future) Who are the characters in the story? Who do you like/dislike? Why? Do you feel similar to any of the characters? How are you similar? Questions to ask when your child has finished their book... Was the book as you expected? Was there anything you disliked about the story? At what point did you decide you liked/disliked the story? If you have read this book before, did you enjoy it more this time? Did you notice anything special about the way language is used in this book? (dialect, descriptive writing etc) If you had written this book, how would you have made it better? Has anything that happens in this book ever happened to you? What was the most your favourite part of the story? Is the story straightforward? Is there more than one story happening at the same time? Who was telling the story? Was this the most important character in the story? Do we get to know the characters quickly or do they build up slowly through the book? Was the ending as you expected? Did you like the way the story ended? Do you like the illustrations? Do you have a favourite?
Would you recommend this book to your friends? What you would say to a friend?
Recommended Websites
www.literacytrust.org.uk www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2literacy.html www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/onlinestory.htm www.oxfordowl.co.uk www.mrthorne.com/ www.booktrust.org.uk www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site
Happy Reading!
Cam Woodfield Junior School
Reading at Home An Information eBooklet for Parents
H.Dean February 2013
Reading at Home An Information eBooklet for Parents
H.Dean February 2013
Cam Woodfield Junior School Reading at Home
Reading has been a success at Cam Woodfield Junior School for many years. Much of this success can be attributed to the support and encouragement that children are given from reading with parents and carers at home. Young people who read outside of class daily are 13 times more likely to read above the expected level than those that do not. National Literacy Trust 2012 All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Draft National Curriculum 2013
We want our pupils to be enthusiastic, independent readers who develop the habit of reading widely and often, both for enjoyment and information. We need them to be confident and daring, to enjoy books, to talk about the books they read and to have an opinion about them. We need them to know that reading is an essential life long skill which is for everyone. Helping your child to develop a love of reading now, will help them to develop as independent readers and learners for the rest of their lives as well as discover a world where they can develop culturally, emotionally, spiritually and socially. This booklet aims to help you to support your child with reading at home to become a confident, independent and fluent reader.
HOW TO MAKE READING AT HOME A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE 1. Choose a quiet time Make reading time a routine which you stick to. Turn off the phone and TV to minimise interruptions. Give this time some importance. 2. Make reading enjoyable Sit together. Get involved with the reading material. Discuss the book. Share the book. Take it in turns to read if your child is reluctant. Model expression: use funny voices. Feign excitement, surprise, wonderment or horror if necessary. Ask what they think? 3. Maintain the flow Reading is not a test! If a word is mispronounced, pause to give them time to self-correct. Tell them unknown words to maintain the flow. If they try to sound out a word, encourage the use of letter sounds (phonemes). Prompt. Ask: What do you know about that word? Perhaps they see a familiar letter string or they can spot a word within a more complicated word. If your child inserts a word which is not entirely correct but makes sense, don’t stop them. They have shown that they are making meaning from the text. Take over for a while if they are struggling. Concentrate on enjoyment, grasping the meaning and maintaining the flow. Praise. 4. Be positive Boost confidence with constant specific praise, eg: ‘Well done for having a go!’ ‘I like the way you tried to sound out the word.’ ‘That was really good when you self-corrected because you knew that it didn’t make sense.’ That was very effective expression.’ I like the way that you made it sound like a question, you really noticed the punctuation.’ ‘I like the way that you didn’t give up.’ 5. Nothing succeeds like success If your child wants to read a book again or read an easier book this will help them enjoy reading and to see themselves as good readers. Until they have built their confidence this is better than struggling with a book with many unknown words- this is counterproductive- flow is lost, meaning is lost and confidence is lost. Reading at a manageable independent level aids understanding and promotes fluency especially if the book has been read several times. 6. Regular practice Children learn to read by reading. Little and often, ideally everyday, at a minimum, three times a week for 10-15 minutes.
7. Talk about the books Reading can often be perceived as a silent and solitary activity and this turns many children off. Talk helps to make reading meaningful and sociable and can be a very successful way of engaging children, particularly boys. Children's oral language skills are crucial to their development as readers and writers. Talk helps all learners to shape and articulate their thoughts, engage with texts, question texts, and gather ideas for writing their own texts. Boys in particular benefit from sharing and reinforcing their thoughts and ideas through talk.
Ask lots of questions. Give them time to respond, discuss and to give their opinions. This shows their understanding, helps develop comprehension skills and shows their enjoyment. Can you guess what is going to happen next? What happened in the story? Does this story remind you of any thing that has happened to you? Does it remind you of anything you have read before? Did you think the book was funny? Did you spot any interesting words and phrases? Did you enjoy the book? Why? Why not? Who was your favourite character? Why? Which part did you like the best? Why? Was there any part you didn’t like? Why? Would you choose this book/story again? What would you have done if you were…….?
8. Communicate- the Reading Record Book Please affirm your child’s reading by writing a comment in their Reading Record Book. This helps us to monitor progress – when we are putting extra resources, time and effort toward boosting children’s reading we need to know to what extent it is backed up at home for maximum impact. A housepoint is awarded each time this is done. What to write? Examples might include: ‘Great expression’, ‘We talked about the story’, ‘We discussed the characters’, ’Super fluent reading’, ‘We laughed at the bit when..’, ‘…read with confidence’, ‘We acted out the playscript together’, ‘…is enjoying this author’, ‘We read it 5 times!’ etc.
9. Variety is the spice To see that there are different purposes for reading and to extend the range, encourage your child to read a variety of material: picture books ( often language and discussion rich), e-books, comics, poetry, magazines, newspapers, web pages, jokes, recipes, instructions, catalogues, information books.
10. Use the public library It’s free! Your child can explore different types of books and discover new authors. Audio books can let your child experience books which they couldn’t manage on their own.
Always end your reading session on a high note.
READING STRATEGIES WHICH WILL HELP 1. Be a reading role model Read aloud to your child. Go to town with expression and funny voices, talk about what you have just read - you thought it was funny, they liked the way the author said something, you liked that idea. Talk about any part of the story, the characters, the setting, the words, what might happen next, what you are reminded of etc. Hearing stories read aloud enables the processes of reading comprehension and language development without the additional task of decoding. Talk about your own reading. Your positive attitude to reading and uses of reading for real purposes, including enjoyment and information, are the most powerful demonstrations you can give.
2. Uninterrupted reading Remember that the most important aspect of reading is constructing meaning. Interruptions interrupt that construction of meaning. There’s no need to stop for a small mistake if meaning is still being made.
3. Skip and go on to make meaning To become independent readers, children need to be encouraged to take a risk with a word. Mistakes are OK – that’s the way we learn. Perhaps after a brief sounding out attempt, ask them to skip the unknown word and read on to try to gain the meaning through the context of the rest of that sentence or maybe several of the following sentences, to help determine the unknown word. Or, suggest that they reread the previous part of the text to help find the meaning of the unknown word. Hearing the rest of the sentence, or the beginning of the sentence again, may provide enough information to give a clue to the unknown word. This is an automatic strategy used by efficient and proficient readers. Since reading is a meaning construction process, knowing how to say the word is much less important than knowing what the sentence says in this particular context.
4. Predict to make sense Try covering up the unknown word and ask your child to predict a substitute word that would make sense. There may be enough context in the first part of the sentence for them to predict a meaningful substitution. If not, read the rest of the sentence to gain more meaning from context to help predict the unknown word.
5. Use a word or line guide Using a word or line guide such as a bookmark, lollipop stick or finger to help them stay on track with the text as they read, can help readers who have trouble focusing on lines of text or get distracted when there are several lines. This focus on phrases or chunks of language may help with fluency and will also focus on the beginning sound, which will help with predictions more than middle or end sounds do.
6. Retelling At any suitable stopping point, ask your child to retell what they have read. Ask what they think might happen next. This retelling strategy will give you a good indication whether your child has understood. Try to ask more than surface level questions; the more readers are asked to retell, the better they will become at expecting to read for meaning.
7. Encourage fluency by rereading Children may sometimes choose a book that they have read before or that you may consider too easy for them, but it is important that they are given these opportunities to build confidence and allow them to show off what they can do!
8. Reading together Echo reading- the child's voice is close behind the adult’s voice as they read a favourite book or try out a new piece, or partner reading - the child and the adult could read a piece in a duet- are both strategies that can help your child become more fluent in reading and move toward becoming an independent reader.
9. Reading to others Encourage your child to read to younger children. Record them reading aloud to help them to hear their reading voice and to think about how they could improve expression and fluency so that it can be understood by their listening audience.
10.Use a dictionary Buy a simple dictionary and use it to check the meanings of new words.
11. If English is not your family’s first language You can buy dual language books. You can talk about books and stories in any language.
PAUSE to help them work out the new words PROMPT by using some of the techniques mentioned PRAISE them for trying whether they are right or wrong
Supporting the confident reader It is still important to read with your child even when they have become more confident readers. Do continue to read aloud to them to enable access to texts and language which is too challenging to read alone and encourage them to read aloud to you to maintain and develop intonation and expression. Confident readers may reach the stage where they no longer wish to read aloud to an adult so often and want to read silently to themselves. Sustained reading for extended periods is to be encouraged. To ensure that the child's reading development continues to move forward, we would encourage parents to question the child about what they are reading, to extend their reading understanding and share their enjoyment of the book.
Questions to ask... What is the title of the book? What kind of book is it? (Fiction, non fiction, poetry, short story etc) Who is the author/illustrator? Have you read any other books by the same author? What made you choose this book? (Author, cover, illustration, recommendation, interesting blurb etc) Have you read this book before? Why have you chosen it again? Questions to ask before your child resumes their book... What has happened so far? What do you think will happen next? What are the clues that make you think this? How would you like the story to end? Do you feel involved in the story? Why? Where is the story set? Is there a description? When is the story set? (Past, present, future) Who are the characters in the story? Who do you like/dislike? Why? Do you feel similar to any of the characters? How are you similar? Questions to ask when your child has finished their book... Was the book as you expected? Was there anything you disliked about the story? At what point did you decide you liked/disliked the story? If you have read this book before, did you enjoy it more this time? Did you notice anything special about the way language is used in this book? (dialect, descriptive writing etc) If you had written this book, how would you have made it better? Has anything that happens in this book ever happened to you? What was the most your favourite part of the story? Is the story straightforward? Is there more than one story happening at the same time? Who was telling the story? Was this the most important character in the story? Do we get to know the characters quickly or do they build up slowly through the book? Was the ending as you expected? Did you like the way the story ended? Do you like the illustrations? Do you have a favourite?
Would you recommend this book to your friends? What you would say to a friend?
Recommended Websites
www.literacytrust.org.uk www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2literacy.html www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/onlinestory.htm www.oxfordowl.co.uk www.mrthorne.com/ www.booktrust.org.uk www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site
Happy Reading!
Cam Woodfield Junior School
Reading at Home An Information eBooklet for Parents
H.Dean February 2013
