How many readi

ng challenges

In February, we challenge you to complete as many of the activities in the booklet as possible. They will all help you to improve your reading. Each time you complete an activity, please colour in the relevant box on your challenge card and and bring it back to school by Friday 8th March. We look forward to seeing how many you can complete!

Note to ParentsEach activity is intended to help the children develop a specific reading skill. The yellow boxes provide a bit more information about why this is helpful to your child and how you can best support your child to develop this skill. Some of the activities may involve looking at a small section of text rather than reading a whole book. Hopefully the children will enjoy sharing lots of different activities with you, and you will then have a bank of ideas to use when you are reading with them in the future. The activities don’t need to be completed in order, and please complete as many as you have time for – 20 would be great but as many as you could manage would also be fantastic. Please also record a brief comment in your child’s reading diary when you read with them as your feedback helps us to have an accurate picture of where the children are

The Reception

Reading

Challenge

2019!

How many readi

ng challenges

Challenge 1Find your set of balloon words and see if you can spot any of them in your reading book. Choose a page to read, making sure that you read the balloon word straight away (you don’t need to sound it out because you know it already).

Challenge 2Look through your book and see if you can find any speech marks or speech bubbles. Can you work out who is talking? Work out what they are saying, then read it fluently in an appropriate voice for that character.Challenge 3

Note to ParentsEach activity is intended to help the children develop a specific reading skill. The yellow boxes provide a bit more information about why this is helpful to your child and how you can best support your child to develop this skill. Some of the activities may involve looking at a small section of text rather than reading a whole book. Hopefully the children will enjoy sharing lots of different activities with you, and you will then have a bank of ideas to use when you are reading with them in the future. The activities don’t need to be completed in order, and please complete as many as you have time for – 20 would be great but as many as you could manage would also be fantastic. Please also record a brief comment in your child’s reading diary when you read with them as your feedback helps us to have an accurate picture of where the children are

Balloon words are ‘tricky words’ which are not phonetically plausible and won’t work if the children try to sound them out. This activity will help your child to recognise and remember these words, and will also help them to read a sentence more fluently.

Speech bubbles – children should be able to say who is talking because they can see the bubble coming out of that character’s mouth. Speech marks – they can read the text and think about which character might say that, or they could also use the picture to see who looks like they might be talking.By using a ‘story voice’ and repeating a short sentence a few times, the children will develop an understanding of what it feels like to read fluently.

Look through your book. Can you make up the story just from looking at the pictures? Then read the words (maybe an adult can help you if it takes a long time!) Talk to an adult – is your story the same as the author’s one or is it different?

Challenge 4

Get Caught Reading! Ask a grown up to take a photo of you reading your favourite book in an interesting place (maybe on the bus or at Grandma’s house). Can you print it off and stick it on the front of your reading diary?

Challenge 5We are starting to learn digraphs – two letters that stick together to make one sound. E.g. sh, ch, th, ng, ee, qu. Choose a page and see if you can spot a digraph. When you read it, make sure you blend it carefully!

An important reading skill is being able to use the pictures to help them read unfamiliar words. Later on in their school careers, the children will need to look at texts and talk about why an author chooses particular vocabulary, e.g. “yelled” instead of “said” is a more interesting verb. They will then need to make strong vocabulary choices themselves. Being able to look closely and infer meaning from the pictures is the earliest level of this skill, especially if they can begin to justify their thoughts, “I think they have lost something because they are running and their faces look worried.”

This is just to remind them that they can read anywhere and to anyone, whilst encouraging them to take every opportunity to read.

When reading digraphs, children sometimes find it tricky to spot them, and will sound them out e.g. as “s-h” rather than putting it together as “sh”. By spotting the digraphs first they will then be able to practise reading words containing digraphs accurately, e.g. “sh-o-p” rather than “s-h-o-p” which reinforces the correct way to read them.

Challenge 6Go outside or go for a walk. Look at the number plates on any cars you can see. Which letters and sounds can you spot?

When reading digraphs, children sometimes find it tricky to spot them, and will sound them out e.g. as “s-h” rather than putting it together as “sh”. By spotting the digraphs first they will then be able to practise reading words containing digraphs accurately, e.g. “sh-o-p” rather than “s-h-o-p” which reinforces the correct way to read them.

Most of the letters we have looked at so far have been lower case, although we’ve talked about using capital letters for names and the start of sentences. This activity will help them to become familiar with what the capital letters look like, and show the children another context in which capitals are commonly used. You could talk about the letter name and the letter sound, e.g. the letter A makes the phoneme /a/ as in hat.

Challenge 7 (needs a book with several lines of text per page e.g. a Julia Donaldson book )Open your book to the first page. Put your pointy finger at the top and on the left. Follow the top line of text with your finger. Then use your return sweep (moving the finger underneath to the second line) and follow the second line of text). When you’ve finished pointing to the whole page, ask a grown up to read the page to you (you could use your finger to point as they read).Challenge 8Go to the library or read something you

have at home, that is not a story. You might choose to read a magazine, a newspaper, some writing on the internet, a non-fiction book or a poem.

Challenge 9Choose a favourite page of your book. Sound it out so you can read all of the words by sight. Practise

Directionality is a key concept of reading – starting at the top and on the left, and reading along the line, then returning to the start of the next line and reading that line (return sweep). Children sometimes struggle with this and read the whole top line of the left hand page then the top line of the right hand page, missing out the rest! Even though they are not actually reading, this activity will help them once they start to read longer books with more text on each page as they will have a clear sense of where to read.

Reading doesn’t have to be books – any reading the children can do is valuable. This is to encourage children to look for familiar words and letters everywhere, and to open up possibilities for those children who prefer a more real-life context for their reading.

reading it in lots of different voices. You could do a quiet voice, loud voice, scary voice, wolf voice, mouse voice, singing. Can you challenge an adult to read it in an interesting way?

Challenge 10Find some writing around the house. Can you read any of it? Can you spot any familiar letters, digraphs or words? Ideas of places to look: on the back of food packets, on the back of cleaning products, newspapers or magazines.

Challenge 11On a page of your book, can you find the longest word? (One with 5 or more letters would be perfect!) Sound it out – you might want to break it up into shorter chunks first. Then practise reading the whole sentence fluently.

This is to make the children aware of the different types of writing that are available to them, and encourage them to read a wide and varied repertoire.

Ideally aim for a word with 5 or more letters and guide them towards a word they can sound out, that splits easily into 2 or 3 parts, e.g. ‘sandwich.” Help them to break it up, reading the first part first, then the second part, then putting the two parts together. Through this activity we would like the children to see that they don’t need to be put off by longer words, and by breaking them down they can read them successfully.

Challenge 12When you are out and about, see if you can spot any words or letters you know (e.g. on buses, on road signs, in shops).

This is to encourage the children to take every opportunity to develop their reading by looking for print everywhere they go. Give them lots of praise for their effort.

Challenge 13Read your reading book, then ask a grown up to ask you some questions about it.

Challenge 14Read your story and stop halfway through. What do you think will happen next? Why do you think that? Continue the story – was your prediction correct or did something different happen?

Comprehension is a key skill of reading – there’s no point in reading a story if we don’t understand what’s going on, or a newspaper that makes absolutely no sense! You might ask them about the characters, how the characters feel (ask them to say why they think that), what has happened in the story.

Prediction is another important skill – to predict accurately you have to have a good understanding of the plot, characters and setting of a story. A sensible prediction will show that your child has a good understanding of the story, an inventive prediction will show that they have a good imagination! You may need to start this by showing them what to do – you could start off with a silly prediction and let your child tell you why they know you are wrong!

Challenge 15 (choose a page with more than one sentence for this)Look for the full stops on the page. Remember that a full stop means the end of a sentence, and we should pause briefly when reading. Read the page, making sure you pause at the full stops (you could also take a breath to make sure you pause).

Challenge 16Read your book then choose your favourite sentence. Can you change any of the words? E.g. “The twins went to visit Gran.” You could substitute the word “twins” for “elephant”. “The elephant went to visit Gran.” How many crazy sentences can you make up?Challenge 17

Choose a page of your book. How many words on the page? How many letters on the page? Which is the

Young children tend to pause at the end of a line rather than the end of a sentence. By looking for the full stops first, the children will know where the sentences finish so are prepared to pause at the right time.

This activity illustrates the importance of reading accurately – the whole meaning of a sentence can be changed by one wrong word. Playing about with the wording encourages the children to engage with and explore the story. If they choose an appropriate word to swap into the sentence, it also shows that they have understood the original sentence.

longest word, and how many letters does that word have? Can you read each word separately and then put the sentence together?

Challenge 18Choose a page of your book. Ask your adult to read it backwards (right to left and bottom to top if appropriate). What does it sound like? Now you show them how to read it correctly (left to right)/

Challenge 19Look through your book and find the letters a, k and the tricky word I. Sometimes they look like this a k I. Which way has the author of your book chosen?

Sometimes children get mixed up with the terms “word” and “letter”. This activity reinforces the difference between a word and a letter, and reminds them that we have to blend the letters in a word to make sense of it.

This activity reinforces directionality – we read from left to right. If the sentence is “The man went to the shop” you read it to them as “shop the to went man The.” This will reinforce that we have to read left to right to make sense of text. It also encourages the children to show you what they know, which reinforces their knowledge of directionality, and makes them laugh.

Challenge 20Choose your favourite book. Practise it lots of times with an adult at home, then take it to another special person (a friend or another adult) and share it with them. Tell them why you like it and why they will enjoy it too.

A few familiar letters are sometimes seen in different ways. The children have been taught to write a, k and I, but they need to recognise the other ways (styles of print/ different fonts) when they are reading.

This activity is to remind the children that it is fine to read favourite books lots of times. It will encourage them to develop favourite stories that they know really well and give them confidence and enjoyment in their reading.