K/1

Repeated practise of new skills just after they have been learned is critical in the early years. This is why we ask parents to listen to their children read every night. We also know that when children read the same book a few nights in a row, they improve their fluency which is a key part of learning to read. It may seem boring to parents - but it is SO exciting to your children when they can start reading without sounding out every single word!  It may seem like such a small thing that can be easily missed - but it makes SUCH a big difference in their learning journey and makes the effort of reading worthwhile. Fluency is essential to comprehending, thus enjoying the reading experience. Ahhh, the joy of reading a good book! 

Remember:

Reading is an extremely complex task: it requires physical and cognitive strategies such as controlled eye movement, fine motor skills, phonemic awareness (awareness of sounds in spoken words), phonics (the relationship between sounds and written symbols), sustained attention, word decoding, encoding, and comprehension. PHEW! Yes it can be tiring! Yes, our days are busy, BUT even 5- 10 minutes daily, exposes your child to half- to one million more words per year!!!

What a gift you are giving your child! 

EVERYONE in K/1 should be reading a text from school each night if it is in their home folder. 

Home Learning Routines:

Kindergarten: 

Green home folders must come to school EVERY day. 

Practise sound book - letter name, action and sound EVERY day. Write these when you can with a focus on letter formation and pencil grip. 

Read a decodable book - whenever it is in the home folder.  Record once a day in their reading diary. 

Read and write high frequency words from their lanyards when you can. 

Some of these will start coming home in the coming weeks. 

Sounds and readers are the priority in Kindergarten every night of the week.

Year One:

Orange home folders should be returned every day.  

In Year One on Mondays, we send home 3 readers. This should be enough for repeated reading for the week. Please sign the reading diary just once for each title. On occasion, we will send home high frequency words and other decodable reading passages, when further consolidation is needed.

Each Monday, new readers will come home.