Supporting Your Child’s Early Reading

Learning to ReadReading to LearnReading for Life

Reading is a Complex Process

But good readers need to have good comprehension as well as good phonics skills…

Remember, Phonics is: segmenting and blending sounds + grapheme-phoneme correspondences

• 44 phonemes – remember to use ‘Pure Sounds’ (no ‘uh’ sound on the end: suh just say sss; fuh say fff)

• Set 1: s a t p i n

• Set 2: m d g o c k

• Set 3: e u r h b f l

• Set 4: j v w x y z

• Consonant digraphs: sh ch th ng qu

• Vowel digraphs: ai ee igh oa oo

• More digraphs: ow oi er ur ar or

• Trigraphs: ear air ure

Digraphs are 2 letters making 1 sound

Trigraphs are 3 letters making 1 sound

By using Phonics strategies alone, some children:

• Can read a text but don’t understand it, or at least can’t explain theirunderstanding.

• Decode accurately but read slowly, sounding out every single word, evensimple high frequency CVC words, so reading lacks fluency.

• Read too fast and don’t pay attention to what they are reading. Byrushing they are not reading for enjoyment or pleasure, or gettingengrossed with the story.

• May be able to summarise main events in sequence but can’t give details.

• Read text avidly but never question the meaning of the words or whatthey have read.

Phonics is essential… but not sufficient

The simple view of reading We want our

children to be

in this section.

Reading for Pleasure, Creating Memories• “Sharing stories, alongside the teaching of phonics, formed the foundation of reading

comprehension. As well as tuning in children’s ears to the structures and patterns of stories, theteacher's retelling provided an opportunity to model fluency, expression and enjoyment.Importantly, reading is the context in which the typical Reception child encounters newvocabulary.” (OFSTED ‘Bold Beginnings’).

• Share your favourite book memories with the person next to you. What makes it a specialmemory? Who was involved? Which book was it? Where did it take place? Which feelings areassociated with it?

• How could you create special reading memories with your child? (Cuddles, hot chocolate, bedtime rituals, cushions, campfire, den, tent, tree house etc.)

• Children who are read to will mimic reading behaviours and see reading as more important. They are influenced by their parents’ attitudes to reading. (Campbell 1999).

“There is strong evidence linking reading for pleasure and educational

outcomes… Academic attainment is of vital importance, but the benefits

of reading for pleasure go beyond this and stretch throughout a person's

life. Research finds that reading for pleasure can result in increased

empathy, improved relationships, reductions in depression and dementia

symptoms, and improved wellbeing”. (Reading Agency 2019).

The Importance of Regular ReadingResearch set out to explore the connections between parents reading to theiryoung children and their child’s later reading and other cognitive skills. (TheUniversity of Melbourne 2012).

Key findings:

• The frequency of reading to children at a young age has a direct effect ontheir schooling outcomes, regardless of their family background and homeenvironment.

• Reading to children aged 4-5 years old every day has a significant effect ontheir reading skills and cognitive skills (i.e. language and literacy, numeracyand cognition) later in life.

• Reading to children aged 4-5 years old 3-5 days per week (compared to 2 orless) has the same effect on the child’s reading skills at age 4-5 as being sixmonths older.

• Reading to children aged 4-5 years old 6-7 days per week has the sameeffect as being almost 12 months older.

Quality Interactions Matter• There is a strong relationship between vocabulary size and phonological awareness

(ability to differentiate between sounds) in emergent readers, and then betweenvocabulary size and comprehension in older readers. (Whitehurst and Lonigan 2001).Good oral language ability puts a child on the path to being a good reader.

• “Good language development and brain development are interlinked and mutuallyreinforcing.” (Save the Children 2016).

• “A toddler’s talkativeness stops growing when it reaches the level of their parents’talkativeness.” (Risley and Hart 2006).

• Reciprocal (back and forth) interactions are more important than the actual number ofwords heard, as shown by MRI scans where more of the brain was activated in the partwhere speech is formulated. This corresponded with the children achieving more highlyon assessments. (John Gabrieli McGovern Institute for brain research).

Encouraging parents to talk with (not talk to) their children is the

single most important thing. It is simple and easy to change and doesn’t require any money or resources. “What adults do with their children is more important than their social class, education

background or where they live.” (Desforges 2003).

Best practice • Be an active listener – engage fully and authentically in

conversations.

• Get down to your child’s level, give eye-contact.

• Give them time and space to respond.

• Show genuine interest in what they have to say.

• Invite them to elaborate; encourage them to think creatively and critically.

• Imagine and take on roles together.

• Offer personal experiences and alternative viewpoints.

• Reflect and recount.

• Model your thinking process.

• Develop their language by repeating what they say it back but adding a bit more detail/correct grammar.

• Ensure that interactions are a two-way process, and not one-sided.

• Ask open-ended questions and ‘wonder’ about things.

• Limit the number of questions (try to say four

comments before asking a question).

Alternatives to questions:

I can see you’re…

I wonder why/how/if…Imagine if…

So you think that…

I’m thinking that…

I feel…

It might help if…

Remember when…

Sometimes I…

It’s ok not to get it right 100% of the time, as long as

you make repair e.g. “I’m sorry I wasn’t listening

properly because I was …., please could you tell

me again, because I’m really interested in what

you were saying”.

Why Nursery Rhymes?• They are good for the brain. Not only does the repetition of rhymes and stories teach children how language

works, it also builds memory capabilities that can be applied to all sorts of activities.

• Nursery rhymes preserve a culture that spans generations, providing something in common among parents,grandparents and kids, and also between people who do not know each other.

• They are a great group activity as well as an excellent tool for intimate one-to-one communication and sharing.

• Most importantly, they are fun to say!

“Nursery rhymes in particular were seen to help children to become sensitive to the sounds and rhymesin words and give them practice in enunciating words and sounds clearly. Schools concentrated onthis before children turned four as a prerequisite to successful literacy learning … and ensured thatchildren continued to practise nursery rhymes whilst in Reception.” (OFSTED ‘Bold Beginnings’).

“When, as children, we first stumble across these devices via nursery rhymes, we are not aware ofwhat they are but still delight in the way they sound or describe something. Later we are taught aboutthese concepts and urged to use them in our own writing, and if we have had this exposure to them inthe past, they are easily understood and readily mimicked by us. Look further into nursery rhymes andyou’ll find that they’re packed full of literary devices: there are similes (the fleece that is “white assnow”), onomatopoeia (“pop goes the weasel”) and alliteration (“sing a song of sixpence”).” (RogerMcGough 2018).

End of Year ExpectationsELG Reading: Children read and understand simple sentences. They use

phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud

accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They

demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they

have read.

ELG Writing: Children use their phonic knowledge to write words in ways

which match their spoken sounds. They also write some irregular

common words. They write simple sentences which can be read by

themselves and others. Some words are spelt correctly and others are

phonetically plausible.

Exceeding Reading: Children can read phonically regular words of more

than 1 syllable as well as many regular words. They use phonic, semantic

and syntactic knowledge to understand unfamiliar vocabulary. They

can describe the main events in the simple stories they have read.

Exceeding Writing: Children can spell phonically regular words of more

than 1 syllable as well as many irregular but high frequency words. They

use key features of narrative in their own writing.

Need to focus on developing comprehension skills, as well asPhonics skills and word recognition.

Lots of meaningful dialogue and discussion to help your childdevelop an understanding of the text that they are reading.

Modelling effective reading strategies to enable your child todevelop and use these skills independently.

The power of ‘Wondering’ (what, where, when, who, if, why,how) creates a safe space where there is no right or wronganswer, and encourages your child to make inferences aboutthe text they have read, reading between the lines.

How can we develop effective reading?

The key strategies

Predict Make predictions about the text: What might this book be about?

What might happen next? What could they do? How do you think it will end?

Clarify Check understanding: Which words and phrases do we need to find the

meaning of? Do you know what that word means? Have you ever heard anyone

say that before? What are they saying?

Question Focus on inference and not just retrieval of basic information. Maybe it is because…, Perhaps…, I wonder if…, The author is trying to…, I think

that…,It makes me think about…

Summarise Identify the main or most important information in the text, sift

out the main ideas and discount less relevant/important details. Putting a

summary in to their own words requires information to be understood and

transformed. What have you learnt from this book? What happened in the story?

1. The

characters in

this story are…

2. The story is set…

4. The problem is…

3. The story starts…

5. The

problem is

solved

because …

The story

ends.

Talk Like a Book

How to listen to your child read their book1. Set aside time: make 10 minutes to get cosy and comfy, to focus your attention on listening to your child read. Tell

them how you are looking forward to sharing a book with them.

2. Predictions: discuss the cover pictures, the blurb, the author and illustrator and make predictions about the text. What might it be about? What might happen? Does it remind you of any other books you have read?

3. Reading: Encourage your child to point to each word as they read it to develop one to one correspondence (similar to one to one object counting in Maths), whilst on Pink or Red book band level. (Don’t point for them!) If they have difficulty reading a word, don’t tell them it; encourage them to become an active, independent problem solver: How could you work it out? (e.g. what word would make sense there? What sound does is begin with? Is there a picture clue? Is it one of our tricky words? Has it got a digraph in it? Can you sound it out?)

4. Question and Clarify: check understanding of new vocabulary and phrases. Ask questions and ‘wonder’, (Iwonder why…. I wonder how… I wonder what would happen if…)

5. Summarise: What happened in the story, at the beginning, middle and end.

6. Respond: relate to own experiences – Have you ever felt like that/seen one of those/been there? What was your favourite part of the story?

7. Words/sentence: write a key sentence from the text on paper, and cut up each word. Challenge your child to read the words and then put them back into order. Teaches them about punctuation, sentence structure, grammatical clues, recognising High Frequency Words, and to use phonic knowledge.

8. Praise: Specific praise for effort: You were a Professor Perseverance sounding out that word, You were a Have a Go Hero tackling that sentence, You were a Link and Learn Legend remembering that word from last week’s book, You were a Captain Curiosity wondering what that word meant, You were such an Agent Concentrate, focusing the whole time you have read this book.

Using different sources of information

MeaningDoes it make sense?

Meaning is supported by

vocabulary, knowledge of

the world and the context

of the text.

VisualDoes it look right?

Visual is supported by

phonic, graphic

correspondence and

whole word knowledge

StructureDoes it sound right?

Structure is supported

by grammatical

knowledge, sentence

structure, tenses?

Reading and Writing for a purpose Children are often more willing and engaged in reading and writing if they feel

that there is some purpose or excitement to it. They also need to know why it is so

important to learn how to read and write, and see it applied in everyday life.

Here a few examples you could try…

• simple clues for a treasure hunt

• instructions for crew on a pirate ship

• postcard from a holiday

• letter from a relative or friend

• recipe for a cake

• Christmas or birthday list

• invitations, cards or thank-you notes

• shopping lists, signs and prices

• messages from toys (e.g. Elf on the Shelf)

• make mini-books (folded up paper)

• comics and magazines

• menus

• spy clues or secret messages

Supporting Early Writing at Home

• Make sure that your child sees you writing by hand (e.g. cards, forms, lists, messages) so that they can appreciate that thereare real-life purposes for writing; if they only ever see you typing on a phone or tablet, then they won’t value writing by hand.

• Praise their writing attempt, make it a positive experience which they want to do again. Put it on Tapestry or send it into school!

• Provide them with a range of writing tools (e.g. pencils, felt tips, biros, paper, card, notebooks, paintbrushes, diaries, envelopes).

• Check their pencil grip, and correct if necessary. Habits get harder to break the longer they go on.

• Encourage them to ‘sit their letters on the line’ and form them correctly; again, the more times that they form a letterincorrectly, the more difficult it becomes for them to break the habit and learn the correct formation.

• If your child asks you how to spell a word, encourage them to think how they could work it out independently for themselves.Can you sound it out? What sound does it start with? What sound comes next? What sound is at the end? Does it have adigraph in it? Is it one of your tricky words?

• Don’t correct every single spelling in their writing or you will put them off! The focus in EYFS is on phonetic plausibility, so if youcan sound out and read what they have written, (e.g. naim instead of name, hows instead of house), despite it being speltwrongly, then that is great! Choose one correction to point out and focus on - a word or digraph that they should know like the.

• Model how to orally rehearse a sentence before writing it; count how many words are in the sentence on your fingers, “At thezoo there is a monkey”, “so there are 7 words in my sentence, and the first word is ‘At’, so I need to write ‘a-t’. Now the 2nd wordis ‘the’, It’s a tricky word, I know how to spell it, ‘t-h-e’. So I’ve written ‘At the’, next I need to write ‘zoo’, it has the oo digraph!

• Show them how to read back what they have written to check that it makes sense and work out what they need to write next.

• Remind them to leave ‘finger’ spaces between words and use a full stop at the end of each sentence (not each line!)

We need to make Maths magical and exciting for children, not boring and difficult. Ourown adult attitudes towards Maths can be damaging for our children, especially when wesay we are no good at it or it is hard. We are creating Maths anxiety in our children beforethey even start school, and making it acceptable or funny to say ‘I’m rubbish at Maths’.

Three main predictors of success:

1) support from home2) balanced curriculum3) Number Sense(Sue Gifford)

A quick bit on Maths…

Concrete Pictorial Abstract

bus

1. The one-to-one principle (assigning only one number to each object that is being counted).

2. The stable order principle (knowing that numbers need to be said in the same order).

3. The cardinal principle (understanding that the last number counted indicates how many things in

the set).

4. The abstraction principle (understanding that non physical as well as physical things can be

counted e.g. claps, nods).

5. The order irrelevance principle (the order in which items are counted or start with is irrelevant, as

long as they are all counted and only once).

(Gelman & Gallistel 1978)

None of these principles require the ability to recognise or writenumerals – yet this is often a heavy focus. Recognising and writingnumerals are based on handwriting and visual memory skills, notmathematical ability.

Counting Principles

Excellent series!

! Counting by rote (just saying numbers names in order) is not

the same as being able to count objects.

! Recognising numerals in the right order, is not the same as

recognising them in isolation, out of sequence.

! Naming a numeral is not the same as understanding how

many that numeral represents.

Maths in ‘Real Life’• How many Cheerios will fit on a

spoon? Estimate “I think I can fit…” , then count to check.

• How many Shreddies will fit on a spoon? Will it be more or less? Why?

• Try to subitise instead of count how many (if it’s a small amount). • Count, measure, compare and order sticks or leaves or conkers.

• Weigh fruit at the shop, or cake ingredients.

• Explore the capacity of bottles in the bath.

• Give small amounts of pocket money to pay for things at the shop.

• Count shoes and socks in 2s, fingers and toes in 5s and10s

• Count candles on cakes, how many next year, last year, in 2 years?

• Clocks, timers, stopwatch, what happens at this time?

• Sharing food between siblings/toys equally.

• Go on a shape hunt at home or outside.

• Cutting pizza or cake in half.

• Adding and subtracting with toys.

• And so many more!

Numeral recognition:

- advent calendars

- house numbers

- road signs

- car registration plates

- packets of food

- shoes/clothes labels

- price tags

Games

• Dice are great for subitising (recognising 6 dots straight away because of

their layout). Dominoes and playing cards are great for subitising with

larger amounts.

• Make your own board games with simple tracks so your child can design

them to suit their own interests and make appealing. They will

automatically be working out what numeral they will land on, how many

spaces behind they are, how many they need to roll to win etc. So they

will be doing lots of maths without realising!

• Pl ay ‘ Pairs’ with dominoes, pick up 2, Do these both represent the same

total amount? Add both sides of dominoes together, or take one side

away from other.

• Bowling skittles, How many knocked down? How many are still standing?

Have two turns, add scores from the two turns together, keep score with

stones or a tally chart.

• Make tracks /grids with chalk on the ground outside, roll dice and jump

along.

Games are one of the

best Maths interventions,

if purposeful interactions

are used (Carole Skinner

2005).

Playing cards

are dual coding

Playdough Maths!

• Use props during songs – concrete and pictorial to

accompany numerals/fingers when counting.

• Pr ovide rhymes props in the environment for children

to revisit and rehearse to consolidate and explore.

• Use as basis for problem solving – If only 2 little ducks

came swimming back, how many are still over the hill

and far away?

• Teach as inverse (1 more /1 less) together e.g. There

are 4 currant buns now, but how do I get back to 5?

• Use mathematical stories as a fun way to introduce

mathematical concepts – provide a context or hook

for the learning.

Mathematical Rhymes and Stories

End of Year ExpectationsELG Number: Children count reliably with numbers from one to 20, place them in orderand say which number is one more or one less than a given number. Using quantities andobjects, they add and subtract two single-digit numbers and count on or back to find theanswer. They solve problems, including doubling, halving and sharing.

ELG Shape, Space & Measure: Children use everyday language to talk about size, weight,capacity, position, distance, time and money to compare quantities and objects and tosolve problems. They recognise, create and describe patterns. They explorecharacteristics of everyday objects and shapes and use mathematical language todescribe them.

Exceeding Number: Children estimate a number of objects and check quantities bycounting up to 20. They solve practical problems that involve combining groups of 2, 5 or10, or sharing into equal groups.

Exceeding Shape, Space and Measure: Children estimate, measure, weigh and compareand order objects and talk about properties, position and time.

Make a Difference!Please read to and listen to your childreading as often as possible. Rememberthat reading every day could add a wholeyear onto their reading age!

Quality interactions, conversations, rhymesand games can make a huge difference toyour child’s vocabulary and cognitiveability.

If you have any questions, please ask!

Final word from Dr Seuss!

Surprise Storyteller Monthly on a Wednesday, please email us if you’d like to volunteer

Breakfast with BooksWednesday 13th February 8:50

Stay and Play Maths focus coming soon!

Parents as Partners