Literacy

Reading at Home with Your Child in the Early Years (F-2)

Your child will bring home two kinds of books.

1. Decodable Readers  (Child reads to parent) 

These are special books for children to practice their decoding (sounding out) skills. The words in these books have sounds in them that students are learning to read and write at school. Each stage or level of reader is carefully sequenced to give children confidence and success.

1. Library books .  (Parent reads to child)

These books have been selected by your child.   They are a great source of rich vocabulary and language modelling but contain sounds and words that they may not yet have been taught. We encourage you to read these books to your child.

How to read Decodable Readers  with your child:

1. Practise sounds.  Most books have letter sounds to practise at the beginning or at the back of the book.  Practise reading these ‘with speed’.Children need to know these sounds to read the book.
2. Practise ‘tricky words’ There will also be some irregular words which might be called ‘heart words’ or ‘tricky words’. These words cannot be sounded out yet, and need to be learned ‘by heart’.  Practise these before starting.
3. When your child is stuck, pause.  They may need time to say the sounds and blend them together. After about 3 seconds, you may need to use a prompt:
4. Some prompts you can use:
   1. Say the sounds (pointing to each of the spellings in the word) and read the word
   2. Slide your finger along, under the whole word
   3. “Did that sentence make sense? Let’s read it again”.

And for longer words:

1. Read one syllable at a time eg pic nic
2. Find  the base first and then add prefixes and suffixes  eg un comfort able
3. When your child is finished reading the book, you can ask them questions.  These are usually found at the back of the book.
4. Your child should read this book 3-4 times over the week to build their fluency.  The first read might be quite laboured as they take time to decode the words but each subsequent read should become quicker until they are reading their text with pace and expression.
5. If you child is reluctant to read, try doing a Buddy Read where you take turns to read a page each.

Watch this video to see an example of Home Reading

How to read library books with your child.

1. Get comfy, snuggle up and show pleasure.  If you show enjoyment, your child will definitely enjoy books too!
2. Model appropriate expression and phrasing ( eg slight pauses at the commas and full pauses at the full stops).