Reading books and diaries.

Reading books and diaries.

Reading books and diaries need to be brought to school every day. This is due to interchangeable guided reading groups. 

Yellow words can stay at home and be used as flash cards for practise. 

We are going over 5 words a week and constantly recapping on the previous words covered. 

On a Thursday or Friday I will change the reading books and assess your child's sound and sight vocabulary (yellow words) knowledge to see if they are ready for a book with words. 

Please take time to learn the alphabet sounds and yellow words by playing games and learning to read them instantly by sight too. This is part of their reading homework also. 

I have a great deal of experience in teaching children how to read and if they struggle in the initial stages because their phoneme, grapheme and sight vocabulary skills are poor then they will be put off reading. Reading your first book should be easy, enjoyable and a positive experience. Not a building up and sounding out struggle which causes anxiety for both your child and you. 

Only when they are able to read some of the sight vocabulary without attempting building and know their basic alphabet sounds (not names) will I give them a book with words. These are very important development stages for reading. 

Learning to handle a book like a reader, use illustrations and discuss characters and plot are vital steps before being able to read words. 

Wooden peg puzzles like these are a great precursor for developing skills to learning high frequency words (sight vocabulary- words that cannot be sounded out or built up). 

These train the brain to learn and memorise through shape. Part of the skills/development for learning high frequency words are recognising and memorising the shapes of the words. Trying to sound them out gives no clue. Just think of the word 'come' or 'here' if you sound them out they sound nothing like the actual words. Learning to read them by memorising that 'come' begins with a 'c' and all the letters are the same size helps. 

I will be holding parent workshops that commence next Tuesday at 3:30pm. If you wish to come along and chat about how to work with the books, sounds and high frequency words with your child then send in a note or please see me. I will provide further opportunities throughout this Autumn Term at different times for those of you who work.

Take time to visit the Oxford Reading Tree website with your child. There is a link on the right of the blog page. Here you will find character cards, story tellers and online books all linked to the scheme. You could print some of the character cards and play a snap game with your child to help them to get to know the characters very well.

Have fun with it. I know that the children are so excited to have received their reading bags with books and I am so pleased that most of you have already started working on the sound cards/Yellow words and books. Make an entry in their yellow reading diary to log progress.

Thank you for your support. 

Mrs James.