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How you can help at home!

Learning to read. Such an important skill but so complex. For parents it can often feel  daunting, especially when you see other children seemingly developing the skills naturally. It is so important to keep the learning process in perspective.

 

Think about children learning to walk and talk. They don’t all do this at the same pace. Yet, by age 11 the speed at which they learnt these skills in early childhood can be all but invisible.

Think about a new born baby and an 11 month old. Think about the differences. When children start school there can be 11 months between some of them. They often will not be at the same stage (obviously there are always some exceptions). But they will ‘catch up’. In my experience it can often take until the end of Primary School but I have known of many children who were later in learning to read who went on to achieve highly in later exams and who went on to have successful jobs.

 

It is all too common for parents to worry about their children’s reading development and for them to panic.

 

But it doesn’t have to be that way…

I have put together some tips and ideas which I have gathered over 26 years of teaching children to read. They fall in to two categories; the reading you do at home, for example bedtime stories, and the reading your child brings home from school.

Reading at Home

Tips on how to make it an enjoyable experience whilst still developing their reading skills

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  • Always try to make it fun and engaging

  1. Let your child choose their favourite books. You may feel you have read it a hundred times but children love the familiarity.

  2. They love being able to ‘read along’.

  3. Children love joining in with repeated phrases.

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  • Introduce new books

  1. By introducing new books you can expand your child’s experience and develop their imaginations

  2. You don’t always need to actually read the book, it can be really good for children to explore the story through the pictures.

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  • Use picture books

  1. There are some fantastic picture books for all ages throughout the Primary phase. (See the Resources section for recommendations)

  2. By using picture books, you can ‘tell’ the story together, thus developing your child’s imagination

  3. Telling stories orally from pictures enhances your child’s language development which will support them when learning to read and write

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  • Read more complex stories

  1. It is so important to read stories at a higher level than what your child can access if they were to read independently as it enables them to;

  2. - access language they would not otherwise be able to access

  3. - be introduced to higher level vocabulary which you can talk about

School Reading (Homework)

Tips to support your child with learning to read

 

  • Always try to make it fun and not a chore

  1. We all know how busy life can be and sometimes you, as a parent, can have had a challenging day, you’re tired, your child is tired and you feel the pressure to read with your child. DON’T. It can be done another day. It is far better to do it when you are both in the right mood otherwise it becomes a negative experience

  2. Find the time of day which suits you. This may be during breakfast or straight after school. However, I would advise not reading school books at bedtime when your child is tired and trying to unwind. Keep this as a time for reading together.

  3. Keep it to short bursts. Children’s attention span is generally one minute per year of their age. Therefore a five year old can only concentrate in a focused manner for five minutes. You could do five minutes two or three times a day, spread out. This is far better than fifteen minutes in one go.

 

  • Take your time!

Learning to read is NOT a race. Not with other children or how quickly you can work through a bookband. I recommend a three step process:

  1. When a new book comes home, initially just look at the cover, the pictures and talk about it. (Some books are, admittedly, better for this)

  2. The second time you sit down with the book you read it to your child so that you are modelling the reading. Use a ‘bouncing finger’ (see the video in the resources section) so that your child starts to see separate words

  3. Your child then reads the book. I would recommend at least twice

 

  • Play games!

Your child does not need to read the whole book every time they come to it. Play games to make it an enjoyable and engaging experience.

  1. Write a single letter or a word on a piece of card and ask your child to be a detective. How many times can they find it on a page or in the book?

  2. As they start to learn the phonemes they can do a phoneme hunt (see resources section)

  3. Cover up a picture on a page. See if your child can remember which part of the story it was

  4. Encourage your child to retell the story from memory

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  • Ask questions

As your child starts to read more complex books it is so important to develop their reading comprehension (understanding what they are reading). Often parents say ‘my child is an amazing reader, they raced through that book and read every word!’. Absolutely that child is doing really well. But….if they don’t understand what they are reading, if they can’t answer questions about what they have read they are missing a vital skill. Children must learn to read for meaning.

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