The Benefits Of Reading

Children of Reception age benefit from frequent repetition of reading skills throughout the week, such as predicting the text from the pictures, sounding out unknown words and understanding the pattern of the text, as well as their key words and sounds. Even when your child knows all their sounds they still need this reinforcement.  If you wish to work further once your child has read their book a good way of using the text is to spot words within the text, cover a word and encourage them to guess what it is and to look for sounds they know.  We will also start to send home key words from the Reception key word list, which should be practised each evening and then left in the reading bag.  These words are ones that need to be recognised by sight.  Sight recognition allows the children to be able to read simple sentences far more easily as they instantly recognise some words and then only need to work out unfamiliar ones.

The following is a suggestion that you might like to consider when you are hearing your child read.

• When children are learning to read, pointing under each word as they read helps them to focus their concentration. This can be discarded as they become more confident.
• Useful phrases for your children when they are attempting an unfamiliar word are:

 "Get your mouth ready with the first sound".

        "Look right to the end of the word".

• Suggested questions to ask after hearing your child read:

Tell me about the picture

Tell me about the story

What happened in the story?

Did you enjoy the story?

Tell me which word on this page begins with ~ and select an initial sound or blend.

Show me the little word in this big word e.g in / thing.

Find me another word with ed / ing on the end.