Five or 10 minutes reading each evening will help your child become a much more proficient reader - and it's fun too! Reading a familiar book is good for confidence, and learning to read with fluency and expression.
Our teachers have noticed improvements in the reading skills of children who are reading at home more regularly. Thank you to all the parents who are helping to instil a love of reading!
When you are hearing your child read at home it is useful if you can model how to read with pace and expression, so that the reading sounds like talking. Many children read accurately, but they can lack pace and expression. Reading needs to be at the same pace as talking. Expression shows that children are also understanding what they are reading.
It is also very important to work on comprehension at home. Talk about books with your child, ask questions, get them to predict and discuss texts as much as you can. Good readers are able to compare texts and discuss the authors they have read. When questioning your child, try and ask simple questions about the book getting them to look back at the text to find the answers. Then ask more challenging questions, where the answers are not in the text. ‘Why do you think they…..’ ‘What do you think would happen if…..’
Book Levels and Colour Bands
At Glenfrome Primary School children will begin by only reading decodable texts that are ,matched to their phonic knowledge. When they have passed the phonics screening, they will read banded books according to their level of reading ability. Your child will be given a book level to choose from which will help to ensure that the book they select is at the right reading level. Every box of banded books includes texts from a range of reading schemes so that they will experience a range of stories, text types and illustrations.
Once they become proficient at one level, by reading a wide range of books within it, they will move onto the next. Your child’s reading will be assessed before they move up to the next level. As mentioned above, we look at the accuracy of their reading as well as the expression, pace and comprehension.
