Reading with understanding

Blobdags like nutto What do the blobdags like?

This proves that you do not need to understand every sentence to be able to answer questions on a text.

Our aim is for students to read with understanding rather than just read.

Support in school Teaching Assistants – group work Year 12 students Reading to younger students helps them have an overview of a short story so

they can appreciate the structure and organisation of a text e.g. beginning, problem, resolution, end.

Support at home Listen to your child read 3 to 5 times a

week. Students should read out loud for 10-15

minutes. How can I help?

Encourage your child to read out loud for fluency

Ask your child to retell the story Ask your child questions about the text

Video Diaries What if time is an issue? As an alternative, you could encourage your

child to keep a video diary of their reading progress. Reading out loud for fluency Retelling a story Ask your child questions about the text Video diaries could be shared with the teacher

See Studywiz for instructions regarding video diaries.

Example of a Video Diary

Reading prompts Questions that you can ask your child to

encourage reading. Also available on Studywiz.

Reading materials What type of materials should my child be

reading? High interest Vocabulary that stretches but does not exclude the

reader Variety

internet reports and news instruction manuals recipe books newspapers magazines comics

Frankenstein

Asterix

Star Wars

First Language Reading

Can one of the reading sessions be in the child’s home language (i.e. not English)?

Yes – especially retelling a story, which also encourages reading with understanding. E.g. a news article from their home country.

Resources on Studywiz

Booklists Websites Phonics - 44 sounds

Destiny BIS Library website (can count as one of

their 3 – 5 sessions of reading) Students should know how to log in from

their library lessons. Top 10 books and New Arrivals are

automatically generated by system. Resource lists are popular books as voted

for by the students.

Finding Destiny from the BIS website

Destiny homepage From here students can add a book review,

recommend a book to their friends or use TitlePeek which links to an external website with more information on the book.

Destiny websites Use the ‘websites’ tab to search for child-

friendly, reviewed websites