Reading Books:
As your child begins their reading journey, they will begin to bring home a reading book in line with their current reading ability. At the start of Reception these books are wordless or have very few words, but are important to your child's reading development. These books allow children to learn how stories work, including the order and direction in which they read, without the pressure of too many words on the page. Children will enjoy talking about the story and discussing what is happening in the pictures. The first step in reading is to use visual prompts to help read the words. The pictures provide lots of opportunities for playing with environmental sounds, an important first step in the teaching of phonics.
As your child’s phonics knowledge and reading skills develop, they will receive a phonics-based book linked to the sounds taught in class. Once children finish the Read Write Inc Phonics scheme, they will begin to take home Accelerated Reader books. Children should be able to independently decode these books when reading to an adult at home.
Every week children bring their school book bags and reading records into school are given two reading books to read at home throughout the week. One book is matched to your child’s phonics knowledge or reading ability. These books are used to boost your child’s fluency when reading aloud and encourage them to segment and blend words. The second book is a book that the children have chosen themselves from either their class library or our school library. These books are from a range of publishers and cover different genres of text. The second book is for you to share with your child and should be read alongside an adult. The aim of this is to boost children’s interest in reading and promote a love of reading.
Book Recommendations:
BookTrust is the UK's largest children's reading charity, dedicated to getting children reading. The website recommends books for children from babies to teenagers. Discover some of the best new books, as well as the children's classics waiting to be re-discovered on their website. You can also find the 100 best books for children to read from the last 100 years on their website, the books are broken down into four age bands.
You can find more book recommendations from Books for Topics below:
VIPERS:
As a school, we refer to VIPERS key skills in reading to ensure children know which particular area of reading they need to work on. These areas are Vocabulary, Inference, prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Sequence (Early Years and Key Stage 1) or Summary (Key Stage 2). These areas of reading are explored in guided reading sessions. Exploring these at home is encouraged and supports children in the progress they make.
You can find out more information about VIPERS below:
Our Reading Reward Scheme – The Reading Beanstalk:
Reading at home is one of the most important ways in which you can help your child. Reading a book with your child not only helps them to make progress with reading and writing, but it also stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world.
To encourage children to read regularly at home, we have introduced a new reward scheme linked to home reading, this is our Reading Beanstalk. Once children have read at least 10 times at home, they will move up a leaf on our Reading Beanstalk and will receive a special reading certificate. Once the children have reached the top of the Reading Beanstalk and climbed all four leaves, they will receive a special golden certificate for reading 50 times.
We ask that parents/carers read with their child at least 5 times per week. Each ‘read’ must be recorded by an adult. Teachers check the children’s reading records every week to see how many times your child has read their school book at home during the week. If your child is in Year Four and is reading independently, they may write in their own reading record, but we ask that parents/carers sign the record to confirm that their child has read independently.
Thank you for your continued support and happy reading!
