Reading Matters

The value of reading with children out loud, at home, can not be overstated. Research associates reading at home with:

Developing relationships between parents and children
Increased academic and social outcomes throughout life
Increased resilience and self esteem

Reading for even 5 minutes a day exposes children to 300,000 words a year. 10 minutes a day increases children’s exposure to new words to 600,000. 15 minutes a day results in expose to 900,000 words. Meaning 20 minutes a day results in 1.8 million word exposures in just one year.

This is sometimes called ‘The million word gap’ to signify the difference between those students who are reading and being spoken to at home and those who are not being exposed to read and spoken vocabulary.

Understanding how a child learns to read is an important part of supporting young readers at home. The National Reading Report (2000) shows that there are 6 key skills at play when teaching a child to read. These are referred to as the pillars reading education. These are:

Oral language- The system through which we use spoken words to express knowledge, ideas, and feelings.

Phonemic awareness- The ability to hear and manipulate sounds eg knowing there is a /buh/ sound at the start of bat.

Phonological Awareness- Knowing the relationship between letters and sounds.

Reading Fluency – This includes the use of rhythm, phrasing, intonation, naturalness, and use of voice (for different characters/moods).

Vocabulary - Reading vocabulary refers to words we recognise or use in print. This includes the words we need to know to understand what we read.

Comprehension- refers to the understanding text: spoken, written and/or visual. This includes being able to simultaneously extract and construct meaning.

So how can parents support students to read at home:

Making a routine for reading, whether this is at bed time, in the morning or even in the car on the way to school.
Practice reading Magic Words or High Frequency words
Practice making connections between letters and sounds
Changing Take home books daily and/ or using digital take home readers included in Reading Eggs/ Reading Eggspress or Wushka
Playing board games and apps that include phonological awareness skills such as Fast Phonics, bananagram or scrabble,
Talk about the text first before reading to deepen comprehension and elicit needed vocabulary.
Making connections between words that rhyme or have similar meaning
Reach out to your child’s class teacher for further ideas

Sarah Watkins

Literacy Learning Specialist

Chess - 2024