Literacy Home Learning

It has been great to see the fantastic work our students are doing at home to build on their literacy skills. Our teachers are doing a brilliant job planning meaningful literacy activities which build on and extend our students’ knowledge and understanding.

A snapshot of our learning this week:

Prep students have been practicing naming letters and saying their sounds.

Year 1/2 students have been practising how to include adjectives in their writing and finding words that have the ‘st’ blend.

Year 3/4 students have been learning how to use ‘thinking tracks’ and ‘right their questions’.

Yr 5/6 students have been working on the use of speech marks in Writing.

Reading at Home

While we are isolating at home and have a break from the many after school activities our children are involved in, this extra time gives us the perfect opportunity to immerse our children in the magical world of literature. We have an enormous amount of online resources available to us, however lets not forget the joy of curling up with a good book!

Some tips for Home Reading:

Establish a reading routine. Read aloud with your child every day. If English is your second language, read in your home language. If you lack confidence in reading aloud, the fact that you are reading with your child is what matters. Talk about the illustrations and contribute where you can. Share your excitement for reading and this will be the model your child will adopt.

During home reading time, turn off electronic devices and give each child ten minutes of your undivided attention.

Before you read a book, set your child up for success. Reading is not a test! Reading time is only ten minutes so do some of the following: Keep the introduction short – one minute is enough. Talk about the illustrations and the title. Read the blurb and talk about the author, talk about any unusual words, read a page here and there as your child flicks through the book, discuss the characters.

If reading time is stressful, move the reading to a new location. Instead of sitting at the kitchen bench, move to the lounge room floor, or go outside and sit under a tree.

Find a reading time that works for your family. Limit the time and set the timer if reading in the past has always been difficult. It is better to have an enjoyable 10 minutes than a laborious 30 minutes where everyone is left feeling frustrated.

At the end of the 10 minutes, ask questions that encourage discussion, for example: What was your favourite part? Tell me about the characters. What do you think will happen next? What did you think about that setting? What do you like/ dislike about this book? Make it a conversation as you would in a book club.

Encourage your child to read independently. A bedside light is one of the best enticements for your child to read before going to sleep. After the 10 minutes of reading with you, your child may choose to continue reading independently.

The less you interrupt the 10 minutes of reading, the more you are supporting the readers’ independence, resilience and confidence. Simply listen as your child reads.

Avoid judging your child’s reading with words such as: ‘good’, ‘excellent’ or ‘getting better’. Instead say things about the strategies your child uses when reading such as: ‘I like how you read on when you came to that difficult word.’ ‘I like how you changed your voice to be the voice of the character in the story’. ‘I noticed that you reread the bit that did not make sense.’

If your child is reading independently and has reached the level of chapter books, it is not necessary for you to read aloud together any more. Your job is done. That is not to say, you cannot continue to share reading time because it is what you love to do as a family or that you sit and read silently together or that you talk about the books your child is reading because you are interested in their reading choices. Readers read differently in their heads compared to reading aloud.

*adapted from PETAA (Primary English Teaching Association Australia)

A reminder for our students...

Children, remember that you can reread a book that you have enjoyed reading before. Since I haven’t been able to borrow from a Library, I have been rereading a book that I have on my bookshelf about one of my favourite soccer players. It’s called ‘Legacy’ and it is an autobiography written by Tim Cahill. Did you know that he has also written a series of books called 'Tiny Timmy'? We have these books in our school Library. Email me and let me know which book you are reading this week!

Franca Paduano

Literacy Leader

fpaduano@cohroakeast.catholic.edu.au

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Issue 6 · 07 May 2020

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