We use a variety of reading scheme books throughout the school; including Rigby Star Big Cat Phonics, Pearson Bug Club, Ginn All Aboard, Oxford Reading Tree.
Helping Your Child to Read
Choose a time when you know there will be no interruptions and the television is not on. Five or ten minutes per evening is a suitable length of time for young children.
Let your child hold the book and turn the pages independently.
Talk about the book from start to finish. This may include the title, author, the front cover and what this might tell us, the pictures and way the story is laid out etc.
It is very important that your child looks at the pictures in the story. Discuss all the details in the pictures and describe and predict events occurring. This will help your child to develop comprehension and reading skills.
Read the book to your child to begin with. Make sure that you point to the words as you read them. As your child progresses he or she will be able to remember character names and then gradually read more words by themselves.
It is important that you give you child encouragement at all stages of reading development.
If your child gets stuck on a word you can:
- tell them the word in order to keep the flow of the story
- encourage them to look for clues in the pictures
- prompt the child to look at the first letter sound of the word
- read to the end of the sentence and then see if your child can fill in the gaps
- accept a word of similar meaning, if the sentence makes sense.
Most children enjoy retelling stories in their own words. Encourage them to retell stories when you have finished reading them.
Read the book a few times. Children gain confidence through repetition and it helps to reinforce new words.
Ask your child about the book when finished:
- which page did you like best?
- has something like that ever happened to you?
- what did you think about…?
Remember that reading should be fun! If you give your child lots of opportunities to read and lots of encouragement you will both get a great deal of pleasure from sharing a book together.
Visit our Books to Try page for ideas of stories to read with your children.
