Help @ Home

Supporting your child to read at home

Reading with Your Child

For some parents and carers, reading stories aloud comes naturally. For others, it can be a little outside of their comfort zone, and it can be hard to know where to start or how best to support. However you feel, it is important to recognise that this time is hugely important for your child's learning and development.

Reading aloud is a great way to arouse curiosity and imagination in your children, it literally unlocks a world of possibilities for them both now and into their future. The link to the right provides 7 simples steps to help you relax and enjoy the experience together.

Use this time to unwind, relax and spend some quality time together as a family.

Reading aloud to children: 7 steps to making it magical | OU News

Little wandle reading scheme

PHONICS - LITTLE WANDLE PROGRESSION.pdf

Your child will bring home a carefully selected book, it is essential that you listen to them read every day and record this in their reading record book.

What books will the children bring home?

We use Book Bands through our Little Wandle reading scheme to provide a variety of texts to keep children engaged and motivated in their journey to reading fluency and understanding. The reading progression help to give teachers a means of assessing progress in reading, particularly in Key Stage 1. We have carefully selected Little Wandle as our scheme of choice as it provides precisely levelled and skilfully written books that support reading development through ‘real’ books (the kind of children’s books found in bookshops).

The children will also choose a 'book for pleasure' from the book corner. They can change this as often as possible and allows children to develop a love of reading by sharing books they have chosen themselves with an adult at home.

Little Wandle Tricky Words.pdf

Tricky word list

This document explains why the word is 'tricky' and how to help your child.

Tricky word flashcards.docx.pdf

Tricky word flashcards

These flashcards match the tricky words taught, and can be printed and used at home to support your child.

Some Top Tips for promoting KS1 Reading @ Home

As well as listening to your child to read their school reading book every day, it is also important to expose them to wide range of reading opportunities. Here are a few suggestions for KS1:

Use Collins Big Cat e-books - These books link to our school scheme and support children in the early stages of reading. These books should be familiar to your child and have a range of quizzes/ interactive elements too.

Oxford Owl - Oxford Owl have a range of free e-books which are similar to the books we use in school. They also provide lots of useful advice for parents about reading with children in KS1. https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-age-4-5-reception/

Read to your child - Reading to your child has numerous benefits and is so important. It's essential to model good reading to children and it's also a lovely experience to share books with children. Don't underestimate the power of reading to your child.

Keep up phonics work to support decoding - Phonics Play is a free website that has a wealth of resources your child can interact with. Working on decoding skills is highly valuable for young children.

Talk about books - Reading isn't just about reading and decoding the words on the page. It's essential that children develop understanding of what they are reading. Talking about pictures or stories will really support this. Our parent reading guides give ideas of questions you can use when talking about books with your child. Click the green button (to the right) to go to our guides.

Listen to Audio Books - There are so many audio books available for free. Listening to a story and then talking about it or answering questions about it is a really useful activity.

Amazon Kindle - You can sign up for a month long free trial and this gives access to lots of books.

Read books you have at home together. Take it in turns to read sentences and find words your child will be able to read within the stories you have in your own collections.

Year 1 and 2 Reading Guide - Website.pdf

Reading_with_TRUST_comic.pdf

7_Top_Tips_to_Support_Reading_at_Home.pdf

supporting your child to Write at home

Supporting handwriting at home

To help support the teaching of handwriting at home, we use the Letter-join handwriting programme. As part of our school subscription, you are able to access the Letter-join resources from home using the resources that your child will already be familiar with.

With gentle encouragement, children in KS1 will be aiming to produce neat handwriting with consistent spacing and letter sizes.

Practising handwriting exercises both on tablets and with pencils on worksheets can be fun with real improvements achieved surprisingly quickly.

When using Letter-join at home, you can be sure that your child is practising the same handwriting techniques and styles they are also learning inside the classroom.