Teaching & Learning
Ms Jacqui McAlister
Why is Home Reading important?
Home Reading provides the extra practice your child needs to become a confident, lifelong reader. Research suggests that children will read 1,800,000 words in a year if they read for 20 minutes a day. Home reading develops good reading habits and builds a love of reading.
Setting up a routine
Every family is different. Find a quiet time of the day and comfortable place to read. Try to make reading a regular part of your daily routine. Talk to your child about how you can make home reading a calm and positive experience for everyone.
Providing support
Your child may bring home books that range in difficulty. Some ways that you can provide support include:
- tuning your child into the topic or genre of the book
- talking about other books, films or familiar experiences related to the themes, words or pictures in the book.
- if your child does not know the word: encourage them to sound it out, break words into smaller parts and then use the pictures for clues and think about if it makes sense
- encouraging your child to read the book more than once
- acknowledging that reading can be difficult, and that practice will improve reading skills
Always talk to your child’s teacher if you have questions about supporting your child with reading or have concerns about the books that your child brings home to read.
Enjoying reading
As well as books from school, you can help your child access and choose age-appropriate books that link to their interests, home language and culture. Some ways you can support a love of reading include:
- visiting the local library - some libraries have fiction and non-fiction books in many languages
- keeping books (library books and your own books) at home in a place that your child can access easily
- letting your child see you reading for enjoyment and to learn
- discussing books and stories together in your home language
- exploring different written texts such as supermarket catalogues, graphic novels, poetry, newspapers
- exploring different spoken texts such as audiobooks, oral stories, songs and rhymes in your home language or English
- buying books as gifts
Enjoying reading
We are on a continual journey of upgrading and purchasing new and interesting home reading books. Below is a few alternative reads your child might like to explore/
Kids News:
A free, news-based literacy tool designed for students from Grade 3 to Year 8. It contains a range of daily news stories for written in child appropriate language and filtered/censored to remove any inappropriate content or imagery, as well as related activities for each story.
World Stories:
A free, UK-based collection of stories from around the world. The collection includes retold traditional tales and new short stories in 31 languages, including English.
Story Box Library:
https://storyboxlibrary.com.au/
This resource is available for free with Hume or Moreland library membership. It features mostly Australian and New Zealand actors, comedians and singers reading aloud Australian and New Zealand texts.
Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge:
https://vprc.eduweb.vic.gov.au/home
Regards,
Jacqui McAlister
Assistant Principal