Supporting reading at home

Victoria Marshall : CLLD consultant

What is reading?

Phonics

• Children in EYFS and KS1 are taught phonics everyday.

• It begins in Nursery with developing children’s LISTENING SKILLS.

• NOT about teaching letters

What can I do at home?

• Go on listening walks • Make sounds, using a range of props,

such as running a stick along a fence or tapping on the bin lid.

• Make your own musical instruments.• Sing known songs loudly and then

softly, stretch words in known songs and add new words or sounds.

• Listen to a range of music with your child, from rap to classical

•Read or say poems, songs, nursery songs and rhyming stories as often as you can.

•Alliteration is a lot of fun to play around with. Your child’s name can be a good place to start, for example, say: ‘Carl caught a cat’, ‘Jolly Jessie jumped’, ‘Mummy munches muffins’.

•Say words in different ways (fast, slowly, high, low, using a funny voice).

•Make different voices for characters when reading stories.

Oral blending

Hearing a series of spoken sounds and –merging them together to make a

spoken word – no text is used

– for example, when a teacher calls out b-u-s’, the children say ‘bus’

– This skill is usually taught before blending and reading printed words

Oral Segmenting

The reverse of oral blending

- hearing a spoken word and separating it into individual sounds

- for example, when a teacher calls out pig, the children say the sounds ‘p-i-g’.

Pronouncing the sounds

• You need to take care how you say sounds.

• Take great care not to add an –uh

sound onto the end of sounds such as t j p

What can I do at home?• Try breaking down simple words when you are giving

instructions or asking questions, such as ‘Can you find your h-a-t hat?’ ‘Sit on the s-ea-t seat’.

• Find real objects around your home that have three phonemes (sounds) and practise ‘sound talk’. First, just let them listen, then see if they will join in, for example, saying:‘I spy a p-e-g – peg.’‘I spy a c-u-p – cup.’‘Where’s your other s-o-ck – sock?’‘Simon says – put your hands on your h-ea-d.’‘Simon says – touch your ch-i-n.’

Learning what letters look and sound like

... Usually begins in Reception

...introduced to letters in sets (not in alphabetical order)

....Begin to blend and segment using these letters

Blending

We blend letters in words in order to read:- b-e-d - bed

SegmentingWe segment words into graphemes in order to write:-

ie:- man - m-a-n

cat

c a t

What can I do at home?

• Buy magnetic letters for your fridge or foam letters for in the bath. Find out which letters have been taught – have fun finding these with your child.

• Make little words together, for example, it, up, am, and, top, dig, run, met, pick. As you select the letters, say them aloud: ‘a-m – am’, ‘m-e-t – met’.

• Now do it the other way around: read the word, break the word up and move the letters away, saying: ‘met – m-e-t’.

But...it’s not that simple!!

.....sometimes 2 letters make one sound

....a new sound is when your mouth changes shape

ship

sh i p

bath

b a th

boil

b oi l

....sometimes the same letters are pronounced differently

hot and cold

bread and sea

chin, school and chef

Sometimes the same sound is spelt differently.....

Play, rain, lane, great, straight,

eight, fete, they

Some words can’t be sounded out...

....These are called ‘tricky’ words.

....Children learn them by sight.FlashcardsMagnetic words Tricky word bingoPoint them out in the environment

Reading in the classroom

• Shared Reading

• Independent Reading

• Guided Reading

Book Banding•Organisation of books

•Coloured band levels

•Guided reading – instructional level

•Home reading – easy level

•Reading for enjoyment

Reading together at home

Before reading –• Practise some sounds.• Play an oral blending game with some words that are in the book.• Practise some ‘tricky words’.• Read the title and the blurb.• Look at the pictures and talk about what’s happening.

During reading –

•Count the number of words on each page.

• Ask children to say the sounds and blend them in order to read words they do not recognise immediately.

•Check that children understand the meaning of new words.

•Allow children to look at the pictures for clues!

After reading –

•Play ‘picture detective’..find the object that begins with p, where is the b-oa-t?

•Play ‘word detective’...look for words in the book that contain a particular sound.

•Story comprehension – characters, lieks/dislikes, how did it make them feel?

It’s not just about the ‘reading book’...

• Board games• Internet and computer games• Baking• Signs and labels around them• Instructions

Reading Records.....what do I write?

Let the teacher know how your child has got on ...

• What sounds can they recognise?• What words could they blend?• What tricky words can they read on

sight?• Did they find anything difficult?• What did you talk about? Plot,

characters etc.

Useful Websites

•www.ican.org.uk/talkingpoint/•www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby•www.readingconnects.co.uk•www.early-education.org.uk•www.nationalliteracytrust.org.uk/familyreading/parents

•www.phonicsplay.co.uk•www.read-count.org/index.asp•www.bbc.co.uk