GBP Parents’ Reading and
Writing Information
Session
October 2015
Quiz Time!
What is Charlie’s surname in
Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory by Roald Dahl?
Aims of this session
 To share our expectations for teaching reading and
writing at Great Binfields.
 To understand that a diet of good quality reading
enables children to read for meaning at all times and
this in turn makes them more confident writers.
 To identify strategies for supporting your children
with reading and writing at home.
 To share resources, ideas and strategies to support
children's reading and writing at home.
Our own experiences of
learning how to read
 What are your own experiences of
learning to read at home and at
school?
 What reading scheme did your school
use to help you learn to read?
Do any of these ring a
bell?













Roger Red Hat
Rainbow books
Janet and John
Read it yourself – Ladybird books
SRA cards
Keys words in tobacco tins (in Miss Lyddon and Miss
Rogers’ case a Golden Virginia tin)
Beano
Jackie
Shoot
Match
Dandy
Roy and the Rovers
Books with tapes – Elves and the Shoemaker (classical
songs)
Understanding Texts
 Can you read this?
baa baa black sheep
Have you any wool
yes sir yes sir
Three bags full
 How did you decode the text?
Great Binfields’ reading
curriculum includes:
 Guided reading
 Regular independent reading:
 individual
 group and paired
 Home/school reading
 Hearing books read aloud on a regular basis
 Selecting their own choice of texts
 Hearing books on cd
 E-books
 MP3 books
 Magazines and comics
Quiz Time!
What was the name of
the dog in Peter Pan?
How can you mirror what
happens in school?
 Make reading times a routine and a special time where you can cuddle up
together and have a discussion after reading together.
 If your child is struggling or too tired – model reading to them or simply
take over for a while and encourage them to read along with you. Or get
them to tell the story from the pictures.
 Be encouraging rather than judgemental – ‘What sound does that word
begin with? Can you have a guess at it?’ and ‘What does that word actually
mean?’
 Show your children it’s important that you can lose yourself in reading
material for a short period of time. Perhaps by buying a weekly magazine
for yourself and a comic for your child – or getting something each from
the library. Set aside a short burst of time where you all have
uninterrupted reading. It is all about establishing reading habits!!
 Encourage your child to read with their friends and encourage the
children to make their own books – children find some very special kind of
magic in books they have produced themselves and makes them willing to
read them over and over again.
 Stretch your children by reading higher level books to them.
 Encourage children to read the whole book – perseverance!
As parents you are your child's most
influential teacher with an important part to
play in helping your child to learn to read
and then to carry on that love of reading for
life!!
Research
Reading with
parents –
5 A to Cs at
GCSE
Power of Picture
Books
Reading Questions
These are in
your child’s
home school
book!
Home School Reading
Records
A huge thank you for hearing your children
read (GBP expectation 5 times per week
and recorded in their home school book.)
It is really important to comment in your child’s reading record as
a way of communicating between home and school about some of
the following:
 Whether they enjoyed or disliked reading that time.
 What you discussed during the session.
 What they found easy or tricky.
e.g. Susan loved reading this book with me. We talked about how
the princess felt when she was lost. Tricky words: palace,
eventually. Page 28 next.
Reading Leaflet
Quiz Time
 Identify these book characters…
So on to writing…
 What were your experiences of
learning how to write at school?
 What did you find difficult?
 Can you remember what you enjoyed
about learning to write?
How the teaching and learning of
writing has changed since we went to
school…
 Judging writing is about the quality and
content more than it is about the spelling or
handwriting. These are taught separately.
 Grammar is tested as a separate test in
Year 6. From 2016, Year 2 will also be
tested! A huge focus at the moment.
 We never ‘just write’. No more writing for
writing’s sake! It always has a purpose.
 It’s about real life context and experience
through a variety of different genres.
Different types (genres) of writing
the children learn at Great Binfields!
Fiction
Story writing
Poetry
Diary writing
Play scripts
Descriptions (Character,
setting etc…)
Non Fiction
Newspaper
Recounts
Persuasive
Information
Explanation
Balanced argument
Instructions
Informal and formal letters
The Great Binfields Writing
Teaching Sequence
1. Immerse children with text genre (first 2-4
days). e.g. Give children lots of examples of the genre
to discuss as a whole class (Talk for Writing).
Sharing of film clips with the children linked to the
genre.
Drama and internalisation of stories, text and
activities.
2.
Initial Unaided Writing (very early on in
the unit).
Gives the children a chance to have a go
at the writing in a particular genre
without too much input from the teacher.
This enables the teacher to set targets
for each child for the unit of work.
These will be different for the different
ability groups.
3. Teach the genre to the children using
their targets as a tool from the initial
piece of writing to inform planning
(we also have success criteria);
through a mixture of guided, shared and
modelled writing, drama, word level and
sentence level (grammar) work.
At this point, the children would use a differentiated success
criteria and activities such as the Zone of Relevance.
4. End of unit unaided writing.
This opportunity, allows the children to
show off what they have learnt
throughout the unit.
The teacher will
level this piece of writing and
this will be tracked.
How can you help?
 Take away their fear.
 Reassure and praise whenever possible. Please
do not get hung up on spelling and handwriting.
 Let them see you writing – shopping lists,
emails, perhaps even write them a story!
 Let them see you make mistakes with your
writing! They need to understand that adults
are not perfect writers! We have frameworks
and starting points to help us too.
 Let your children draw and write for fun on
their own.
What activities can you do at home?
 Write messages on funky post it notes or emails to each other.
 Encourage them to keep a diary either for themselves or for
their pet/ toy.
 Write funny stories and letters to each other.
 Regular writing to a relative or close family friend – there is
nothing more magical than receiving a letter through the post.
 Make it fun – get different coloured paper, pens, chalk, let them
use the computer.
 Get them to make scrap books on holiday, write postcards, get a
pen pal, write to their favourite pop group.
 If they’ve seen a film they loved, they could write a diary as one
of its characters or write a play script of the story.
 Writing a match report on a match they played in on the weekend.
 Write a letter/ diary entry to their friend or teacher about what
they have done over the weekend.
 Do not focus on their spelling or handwriting too much (I know it’s
hard!)
 Any writing children do at home, teachers will be more than happy
to look at and reward with stickers and raffle tickets.
Quiz Time!
 Which character from The Jungle
Book was raised by wolves?
Websites








http://www.talesfromtheglovebox.co.uk/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/english/
http://www.magickeys.com/books/
www.storybird.com
www.literacytrust.org.uk
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents/your_involvement/
www.topmarks.co.uk/parents/readingtips.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/magickey/index.shtml
And finally…
 If you have any questions? Come and see us…
 Please use the Post-it notes to evaluate the
session.
 Pink = what you have got out of the session.
 Yellow = Further training you feel would be
useful.
 Thank you for coming along!