Beaver Road Primary School
Why have a Reading workshop?
• We are developing a love of reading as
part of our school action plan.
• The EYFS team feel it would be
beneficial to share the national
expectations for reading and model
effective strategies for supporting your
child’s reading at home.
Beaver Road Primary School
Reading in Reception
• All children are beginning the process of
learning to read
• Learning to read in Reception means access to
other subjects;
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Maths
Science
History & Geography
Languages
What is the national expectation by the end of
Reception?
• Children in Reception are working towards
achieving the following Early Learning Goal:
Children read and understand simple
sentences. They use phonic knowledge to
decode regular words and read them aloud
accurately. They also read some common
irregular words. They demonstrate
understanding when talking with others about
what they have read.
Aims for the evening
• To discuss how young children learn to read.
• To understand what reading activities take place in school.
• To understand what ‘phonics’ is and the different reading
strategies children can use to help them when reading.
• To know how to help your child use phonics to develop
their reading.
• To develop parents knowledge of early reading and how
best to support a Child at home.
Beaver Road Primary School
Reading should have a
purpose!
Children will often read but they will become
successful and confident readers if they have a
reason to read!
Reading should be a purposeful activity that has an
outcome. For example:
• To find out what happens at the end of the story
• To make informed decisions and opinions
• To read instructions about how to play a game
• To find some out some facts
How does your child learn to read?
These are the strategies that your child will use
to learn to read;
• Phonics- knowing the letter sounds, individual
and multiple letter sounds
• Word recognition- high frequency and tricky
words
• Context clues- using what they have already
read and the pictures to work out what the
words say.
Beaver Road Primary School
How do we teach reading? When do
we teach reading?
We teach reading through:
• Daily letters and sounds sessions (phonics lessons)
• Individual reading
• Shared reading, as a whole class or in small groups
• Guided reading, a small group of children reading the
same book, which is appropriate to their ability.
• Having a word rich environment within the classroom.
• Providing lots of independent reading activities to
encourage children to apply reading skills they have
learnt.
Beaver Road Primary School
Guided Reading
• More personalised approach to teaching of reading
• Small ability based groups
• Focus on particular needs of that group so all children
are challenged and extended
• Books can be chosen to suit interests and ability of that
group
• Children can learn from each other
• Opportunities to discuss and analyse texts
• Experience different types of texts
Concepts about print
Why are concepts about print important?
• Concepts of print teach children at an early
age how to orient themselves in terms of
reading.
• Concepts of print are a great predictor in a
childs future success as a reader and influence
a childs fluency and accuracy as a reader later
in life.
Beaver Road Primary School
Concepts about print include:
Holding books with correct orientation
Distinction between pictures, letters and words
Left to right directionality
Return sweep
Lower and uppercase letters
One to one correspondence
Punctuation
Beginning and end of a sentence
Beaver Road Primary School
Reading strategies
Beaver Road Primary School
Phonics
How is phonics taught?
Throughout EYFS – KS1
• Phases 1-6
• Within year group
• By a Teacher or Teaching Assistant
• Interactive games and activities
• Reading and writing
Beaver Road Primary School
Phonics consists of:
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Identifying sounds in spoken words
Recognising the common spellings of
each phoneme.
Blending phonemes into words for
reading.
Segmenting words into phonemes for
spelling.
Beaver Road Primary School
A typical phonics lesson
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Revise and revisit
Teach
Practice
Apply
he
she
we
me
be
was
you
they
all
are
my
her
Beaver Road Primary School
The lingo...
PHONEME
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a
word.
When we talk about phonemes we are talking
about sounds.
A phoneme can be represented/spelled in
more than one way e.g. cat, kennel, choir
Beaver Road Primary School
The lingo...
GRAPHEME
A grapheme is a letter or sequence of
letters that represents a phoneme.
The same grapheme may represent more
than one phoneme e.g. me, met
A grapheme may consist of one (t), two (ch)
or more letters (igh)
Beaver Road Primary School
To put it simply…
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A phoneme you hear
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A grapheme you see
• A word always has the same number of phonemes and
graphemes!
• Cat
high
Beaver Road Primary School
The lingo...
DIGRAPH
Where one phoneme/sound is represented
by two letters e.g.
oo
ee
ch
sh
Beaver Road Primary School
The lingo...
TRIGRAPH
Where one phoneme/sound is represented
by three letters e.g.
air
ure
igh
ear
Beaver Road Primary School
The lingo...
SPLIT DIGRAPH
Where one sound is represented by two
letters split up by another letter e.g.
o_e as in bone
a_e as in save
i_e as in line
Beaver Road Primary School
The lingo...
LETTER NAMES
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn
Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
It is important that children do not try to
sound out words using their letter names.
Both upper case and lower case letters have
the same name.
Beaver Road Primary School
In the English language there are
26 letters
44 phonemes
140 graphemes
Beaver Road Primary School
Phonics for reading
To help children read unknown words, we
encourage them to ‘sound them out’.
This means we are asking children to say
each individual sound in order as they see
it.
When they have said all the sounds they can
blend them altogether to make the word.
Beaver Road Primary School
• Blending is merging the sounds together and
is a vital skill for reading.
• Eg: c-a-t = cat
• If children can’t hear the word the first time,
we encourage them to repeat the word a little
quicker until they can hear the words.
Beaver Road Primary School
VC and CVC words
• C = consonant, V = vowel
• VC words are those consisting of a vowel and
then a consonant, eg: at, in, up
• CVC words follow the pattern consonant,
vowel, consonant, eg: cat, dog, pet
• Words such as tick or bell also count as CVC
words; although they contain four letters, they
only have three sounds
Beaver Road Primary School
Can you spot the odd one Out?
said
shop
and
Challenge 1
Beaver Road Primary School
Beaver Road Primary School
Beaver Road Primary School
Beaver Road Primary School
Pronunciation
For children to get the most out of their
phonics, it is really important that they
pronounce them clearly and precisely.
Clear and consistent pronunciation will
allow them to ‘sound out’ words really
easily.
Beaver Road Primary School
Challenge 2
How do you think you should say these
sounds?
Beaver Road Primary School
Saying the sounds
• Your child will be taught how to pronounce
the sounds (phonemes) correctly to make
blending easier
• Sounds should be sustained where possible
(eg, sss, mmm, fff)
• If not, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be
reduced where possible (eg, try to avoid
saying ‘b-uh’, ‘c-uh’)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqhXUW
_v-1s
Beaver Road Primary School
Tricky words
• Your child will also learn several tricky words;
those that cannot be sounded out
• Eg: the, to, I, go, no
• It is very important that children do not try
and sound out these words but recognise
them on sight.
Beaver Road Primary School
How would you support your child to
read this page?
Home Readers
• 2 books sent home
• 1 Easy text for fluency and 1 at an
instructional level to encourage children to
apply the knowledge they have learnt.
Some questions you may use when
your child is reading to you:
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Do you like this book, why?
Who is your favourite character?
Tell me about a character in the book.
Which words tell you what the character is like?
How would you feel?
What do you think will happen next?
What would you do?
What have you learned about….. In your book?
What can you tell me about…?
Beaver Road Primary School
Beaver Road Primary School
What to do if your child is stuck:
• Use phonics first. What sound does the word
begin with? Can you say the sounds in the
word? Blend them together.
• Read to the end of the sentence. What would
make sense?
• What is the story about- what might fit here?
Does it sound right?
• Look at the picture does it help?
Beaver Road Primary School
No matter what I do, my child doesn’t
want to read!
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Read to your child as much as possible
Don’t make an issue out of it
Paired reading
Make it fun!
Organise a treasure hunt around the house on a
rainy day. Give your child a list of things that they
can find in the house and see how quickly they can
collect all the items.
How can you encourage your child to
read?
• By reading with them and to them
• Making time to read together
• Pointing out words, labels, signs as you are
driving along or out shopping
• Reading books they choose not just books from
school
• Ensure children have access to a range of reading
materials: books, poems, magazines and leafletscapture their interests. If children want to read a
comic let them!
• Visit the library and give books as presents.
• Read and recognise tricky words within the story.
Beaver Road Primary School
How can you encourage your child to
read continued…
• Making bingo, matching games
• Cutting out words from magazines and
newspapers.
• Play ‘I spy’- can children say I spy a word with
the ‘oa’sound
• Continue to play with magnetic letters, using
some two-grapheme (letter) combinations, eg: rai-n = rain blending for reading
rain = r-ai-n segmenting for spelling
• Praise your child for trying out words and give
them time to decode a word.
• Create phonic games with a timer
• Play pairs
Tatham Fells CE (VC) Primary School
Questions
Beaver Road Primary School
Websites you may find fun to use with your
child at home to help with reading and
phonics:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictu
res/cvc/index.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/alphablocks/
games/alphablocks-games/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/fun-withphonics/watch/fun-with-phonics-clips/
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm
Beaver Road Primary School
Useful websites
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Booktrust www.booktrust.org.uk
Read Together www.readtogether.co.uk
Silly Books www.sillybooks.net
Signed Stories www.signedstories.com
Seven Stories www.sevenstories.org.uk