Welcome to WBJS Love for Reading Evening

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Welcome to WBJS Love for Reading Evening
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Between the ages of four and nine, your child
will have to master some 100 phonics rules, learn
to recognise 3,000 words with just a glance, and
develop a comfortable reading speed approaching
100 words a minute. He must learn to combine
words on the page with a half-dozen squiggles
called punctuation into something a voice or
image in his mind that gives back meaning.
(Paul Kropp, 1996)
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Contents

• What is it like to be a reader?
• How children learn to read?
• Reading at school
• Reading at home
• Useful links

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Tell the person next to you the last thing you
read.
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Being a Reader

• Why do we read?

To learn new things, understand complex ideas and
challenge thinking. To improve language skills,
word recognition, builds vocabulary and
spellings To find out about whats going on
around us and in distant places. To tell us what
to do and how to do it. To escape. To dream. For
pleasure. Or even just to pass the time!
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Tell the story
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What skills did you use to read the story?
C'era un volta, una famiglia di tre orsi che
viveva in un bosco. Papà orso era il più grande,
aveva una grande testa, delle grandi zampe e una
possente voce. Mamma orsa era di grandezza media,
con una testa media e un corpo medio e un tono di
vocina troppo bassa per essere un orso. Il più
piccolo era un simpatico orsetto con un corpo
strano, piccole zampette e una vocina strana,
quasi sibilante.
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Being a non-reader

• How did it make you feel when you could not read
  some of the words?
• What clues did you use?
• How did you make sense of the text?

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Once upon a time, in a thick forest, there lived
three bears. One was a great big father bear,
with a big head, and large paws and a great
voice. The next was a mother bear, of middle
size, with a middle sized head, and a middle
sized body, and a voice quite low for a bear. The
third bear was a funny little baby bear, with a
strange little head, a queer little body, wee
bits of paws, and an odd little voice, between a
whine and a squeak.
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How do children learn to read?
Learning to read begins very early in life.
Babies are fascinated by bright colourful books.
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If an adult talks about the pictures and reads
the words, this helps to develop language skills.
The young child also begins to understand that
the content of a book never changes. Later on,
after much sharing of books, children begin to
play read and turn the pages of a favourite story
while chanting parts of it aloud.
During this phase your child is remembering word
patterns and learning about the language of
books. This is a very important part of learning
to read. There is no need for actual teaching at
this stage your child's interest in and
enjoyment of written language is supported
through the regular sharing of books.
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Before starting school, some children take the
next step and begin to notice letters from their
name or recognise a word or two as books are read
together. Many children don't, though. This is
normal, because children all develop at very
different rates.
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Reading at School

• Do you remember how you learnt to read at school?

You may have learnt to read through being taught
words on cards. Then, when your teacher decided
you knew enough, you were given a book to
practise. Some teachers even covered pictures up
because they felt looking at pictures was a form
of cheating!
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We now recognise that quality texts, where the
language sounds good and the illustrations are
often stunning, play an important part in
developing children's reading skills.
Often a whole class is taught to read together
through the use of big books or a shared texts on
interactive white boards so everyone can see and
join in as the teacher points out letters, words
and sentences.

• Building Reading Confidence
• Children become confident independent readers
  through-
• knowing how to build words using letters and
  sounds
• recognising words at sight
• understanding how words go together to make
  sentences
• knowing about different sorts of books and how
  they work

As teachers share books with their classes all
these skills are taught and developed.
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Guided Reading
A lot of reading practice will take part in small
Guided Reading groups where each child has a copy
of the same text. The teacher or teaching
assistant will introduce the text, ask questions,
discuss different strategies then set a reading
task. Children are encouraged to read at their
own pace while the teacher works with every child
in turn. At the end of a session the whole
group discusses the text to check they have
understood. This allows the teacher and
children to spend much longer working with a
piece of text than is possible if every child
reads a different book to the teacher.
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Becoming an Independent Reader
As well as group reading and reading to an adult,
children will also begin to read and enjoy books
in pairs or by themselves. Time is set aside
during the week for this to happen. Reading
Records are sent home for you to record how your
child responds when reading at home. We have
Parent Helpers who may also hear your child read
and make positive comments in the Reading Record.
An equally important part of learning to read
independently is hearing books read aloud.
Hearing language in this way allows your child to
focus on the meaning without having to
concentrate on working out the words. This
really helps children to develop an understanding
of the different sorts of texts and will assist
your child in tackling similar texts
independently.
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Questioning
Questions with different purposes can be asked
and answered before, during, and after reading.
Before children read, they often use questions
to activate prior knowledge, make predictions,
and wonder about big ideas that are not always
answered in the text. During reading, children
form questions to compare and generalise,
identify the theme, and clarify meaning. After
they read, children use questioning to locate
information, understand and remember events and
characters, and identify the theme.
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Our School Reading Scheme
Provides a structured route for progression of
skills Enables teachers to monitor and assess
reading skills
REMEMBER Children should be reading books that
are non-reading scheme books too!
2000 worth of new books are now part of the
school Reading Scheme, we are however, looking at
ways in which to develop the reading scheme
further both in terms of resourcing and assessing.
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Reading at Home
As a parent you are probably helping your child
with reading much more than you may realise. If
your home contains books, magazines and
catalogues and your child sees you reading, if
you read to your child and talk together about
familiar stories and if you also use printed
materials to find things out, then your child
already has a head start in this area.
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How You Can Support Reading
Remember that talking about reading is very
important, so if your child is sometimes
reluctant to read aloud, discussing a book will
also help to develop their reading skills.
Concentrate on enjoyment and grasping the meaning
rather than absolute accuracy.
Keep reading time relaxed, comfortable and
pleasurable, in a quiet corner, with the
television turned off.
Talk about the cover and read the title before
rushing your child into the text, asking
questions, such as What do you think it will be
about? What sort of book is it? Have you read
one like this before?
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Look through the book, noticing interesting
pictures and words, then read the opening
together.
Don't correct too quickly. If your child makes an
error suggest having another go, searching the
pictures for a clue, sounding out the first
letter or reading on before you 'tell' the
problem word.
If your child is really struggling, take over the
reading yourself and let the teacher know.
When your child brings home a book that has been
read before ask for a summary before reading it
again, then discuss the book at a deeper level
than last time.
As your child progresses, talk about authors,
characters and plots or what new information has
been learnt.
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If your child reads silently ask her to re-tell
the part that has been read and encourage the
'pointing out' of relevant sections in the text.
Join your local library together and use it
regularly.