Please see below the "Reading Gems" we use in school to support our year 1 reading targets. You can use these question stems at home.
Bookmarks!
We will soon be attaching different bookmarks to your child’s reading record. These bookmarks are linked to the colour band your child is working on in Read Write Inc at school. Please encourage your child to learn and practise these words at home for both reading and writing. They are tricky red words that cannot be sounded out or phonetically written down. We will also use them in school so please ensure they stay in their reading record. Thank you for your continued support.
Now the children are settled in and our routines are established, we wanted to update parents and carers with more information about the home reading books.
The children should be able to read 95% of these reading books, the aim is for them to rehearse and build speed, fluency and expression at home by re-reading the book. We are encouraging the children to "fred in your head" and "instant blend", this means not fredding words out loud, but in their head and will help them to build speed as they read. This will mean they can focus more on understanding what they are reading, rather than just decoding (using their phonics).
Some children are now whizzing through the books they read: our focus with these children is to build fluency, speed, expression and comprehension skills.
You will find below some documents to support this at home. We use "Reading Gems" across the school (from Y1-Y6) and these will help you to help your child build on the reading skills they will need and will allow them to answer the following types of questions:
1. Enjoy- reading for pleasure and enjoyment- Children will be able to answer questions about their reading preferences.
2. Decode- this will help children to develop the strategies needed to decode a word that they are unsure of.
3. Define- Drawing on knowledge of vocabulary to understand texts.
4. Retrieve- Identify and explain key aspects of texts.
5. Sequence- Identify and explain the sequence of events in texts.
6. Infer- Making inferences from the text (reading between the lines)
7. Predict- Predict what might happen based on what has been read so far.
There are examples of questions and question starters that you can ask at home to help your child build these skills.
Reading Books
Reading books are all collected in on a Monday/Tuesday. The children then receive one reading book on at the start of the week. They then receive the second reading book on their reading day. Children will read at least once a week to an adult. Please ensure reading books are kept in children's book bags at all times, as they may have the opportunity to read with our fantastic reading volunteers. Please read little and often and enjoy various stories and share books at home. Please record any notes you would like to share regarding your child's reading journey in their reading record. Please contact us if you have any concerns, queries regarding your child's reading journey.