Reading Gems Prompt sheets 

Here are two "Book Talk" sheets which you can use when reading with your child at home. There is one version for Fiction and one for Non-Fiction books. 

Reading Update and more information

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).

Comprehension

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.

From Monday 14th September the children will bring home 2 reading books a week. These will be collected in on a Friday so that we can quarantine the books over the weekend.

Please can children keep their reading books in their bookbag so they are ready to read with their teacher on their reading day and in case we get extra reading opportunities.

In order to limit the contact staff are having with the reading records, we ask that parents and carers write in the reading records. We have included an example below to show you how it might be completed. Staff will check them when we read with your child weekly, and will use a stamper to show we have read with them (These have not arrived yet, so you will not see the stamp yet!)

Please try to read little and often and daily if at all possible. 

Please remember, we are reading with the children for the first time this week, so we will assess and change their books accordingly over the next few weeks.