Reading at Home
Learning To Read At Bexton
Children learn to read in different ways and at different speeds. The first part of a child's journey towards being a successful reader starts when the child is a baby and is listening to stories and rhymes. This encourages a love of language and stories and develops the child's vocabulary and understanding of language as they start to become familiar with what words mean and what they look like.
A vital first stage of a child's development as a reader is to be able to 'read' pictures and to determine what is happening or to predict what might happen from the pictures in a book. As this skill develops, children become able to use their grammatical skills to listen to words within a sentence and to make sense of what they can hear. This is an important tool for the young reader as it enables them to make sensible guesses at unknown words within a sentence and to continue to read for meaning without being stopped in their tracks.
Most pre-school children are already reading before they start school; they will be able to read the supermarket sign above the shops they visit frequently, McDonalds, Lego and Disney will be easily identifiable to them too! Whilst your young child won't necessarily be able to identify the letters and sounds within those words, they read them because they remember the overall shape of the word. At Bexton we ensure that children have a good range of high frequency words that they identify without having to ask or sound them out so that they can maintain fluency within their reading, which in turn supports a good understanding of what they have read. These are referred to as 'helpful words'.
At Bexton children will have a range of reading experiences in school. It is a priority for children to be read to regularly and teachers will read stories to the children everyday, whether this is in an English lesson or a story at the end of the day. In reception the children will regularly read to the teacher on an individual basis and will progress to reading in small groups (sometimes called guided reading). This is an opportunity for the teacher to teach the children a specific skill and allow children time to practice it. We also teach reading in whole class reading sessions where the children read together and develop their understanding through questioning and discusssion.
What will we send home for your child to read?
In reception and year 1, children will get two decodable books per week. These books will be carefully matched to the sounds they have been taught in their phonics lessons. We will also send home the sounds your child is currently learning and some 'helpful' words for them to learn.
Once your child has successfully learnt the alphabetic code, we will send home banded books to extend the range of books they read.
Once the children have access to our library books, they will choose from a range of books carefully matched to their reading ability. This is regularly reassessed by the teachers and updated.
How can you support your child's reading at home?
Your child's reading experience is so much more than the reading book which comes home from school. Reading is happening all the time in a classroom and in the school. It is taught in specific reading and English lessons, but children are practising and using their 'reading' constantly across all subjects too.
Parents can support this 'reading journey' through regular reading at home. Reading to and with your child every evening for at least ten minutes can make a dramatic difference to a child's achievement within school. A report from the Oxford University Press highlighted the importance of parents reading with their children. 'Children who read outside of class are 13 times more likely to read above the expected level for their age'.
The report also offers six tips for reading with your child at home, including:
1. Make time to read- even ten minutes a day
2. Choose different types of books
3. Take turns to read
4. Talk about the book- asking your child questions
5. Pay attention to the language
6. Enjoy reading
In order to support parents we have created bookmarks with questions and ideas you can talk about with your child. You can download these on this page. These are also found in your child's reading diary.
This website gives some excellent recommendations for books your child might enjoy.
Please see your child's class page for further recommended books. If you are stuck for ideas of what to read, please see the branching out lists at the bottom of this page. They give ideas of books to read linked to popular authors.