books books books

Books books books
Recently I have been asked a great deal of questions by parents about reading so I thought I would post the following advice.
Reading is like walking, talking, cutting teeth; children will learn to read when they are ready. Children learn to read in different ways
· Sight words – learning flash cards.
· Phonics – learning sounds
· Sentence sense – learn through the meaning of the sentence.
Not all children will learn using all methods and some of these methods will take longer than others.
So you will need to be patient and allow the child to develop their reading skills in their time. However this does not mean that there are not things you cannot do to help. School reading books are only a small tool to creating a reader the following may help.
1. Surround your child/ren with books all sorts fact, fiction, comics, dictionaries and read with them .You read first then get the child/ren to pick out words, play I spy. Get them to keep a diary of the books they read and put a smile if they like it, a frown if they do not.
2. A fun way we adopted in another school was to have Family reading time. Once a week for 5 – 10 minutes the whole family sat down to read their own book, looking at newspaper or magazine the whole family reads at the same time. Some families came back and said that they had to lengthen the time and that some grown ups had rediscovered reading providing a positive role model to their children
3. You may record what your child/ren reads in the reading record book in that way I can talk with the children about the books also send them in to school so that we can share the stories.
The basic skills agency also provide ideas with helping your child with literacy the number is
02074054017. You tell them your child’s age and they will send literacy or numeracy packs out.
I hope this will be of help but please don’t hesitate to come and see me if there is anything else you need to know.
J.Maunder