Reading and Writing in the Early Years

Aims of the meeting Explain the development of reading and writing in children Explain how we support the development and teach reading and writing Introduce you to how we teach phonics Provide ideas to support your child at home

Developing a love of reading and learning! This is the best place to start! We want to encourage children to love reading and to read for enjoyment. If children read for enjoyment they are more likely to want to read to learn. It doesn’t matter if a child wants to read the same book over and over. Being able to retell and remember a story is an important skill. It tunes children in to the structure of stories and helps them to retell stories of their own. They will begin to use langugae form the stories they hear.

Phonics It is a way of teaching children how to read and write Children will hear, identify and use individual sounds in order to distinguish one word from another Knowing sounds will also help children know which letters to use when writing A systematic way of teaching the sounds that letters make. Sounds are taught in the order of Letters and Sounds (starting with SATPIN). However, we use the picture cards and rhymes from the Read Write Inc scheme as visual and oral prompts. Children will use the sounds when reading and writing.

Teaching phonics We teach the 44 phonemes Starting with single letter sounds moving to diagraphs (sounds with more than one letter) Practice writing the sounds Blending to read (decoding) Segmenting to write Discussing/understanding what we have read (comprehension) When children know the first six sounds we begin to teach children to segment and blend words. We call the ‘Fredding’ Fred is our frog who talks in sounds (Fred talk). We talk the children through this a lot to start with and use MTYT (e.g. s-i-t, sit) and we play lots of games like sounds gym to help children to develop the blending and segmenting skills. As we begin to read short sentences or longer pieces of text we will need to develop fluency in order to support the understanding of reading. Children do not need to be able to read to do this. We can develop their comprehension skills when sharing stories together by asking questions about what you have read together (What did that character just do? Why did he/she do that? How do you think they are feeling?)

Learning the code

It isn’t simple! As you know we have a very complicated language It takes time for children to learn all of the rules Sometimes there are many spelling patterns that represent just one sound (e.g. oy, oi, toy, spoil)

High frequency words Can be words that children come across often (big, can, at) Can be words that can not be sounded out (e.g. the, no, go) We will give children high frequency words to practice at home. These are words that children are encouraged to read by sight and this will increase/improve the fluency of reading. As the children’s reading skills develop we will begin to send home levelled reading books. We will expect you to read these with your child at home and we will also read with children in school, either individually or in a group. Children will move up through the levels dependent on their level of fluency and comprehension. We access this regularly throughout the year.

Writng There are many stages to writing (marking, making, using pictures or letters, writing words, writing short sentences) Reading and writing often go hand in hand. There are many stages to writing but as children start to recognise and hear sounds they generally begin to write them. Writing is also a physical process so we practice lots of gross and fine motor activities to support the development of writing. Children begin by mark making which may look like squiggles but they apply meaning to their writing. When they know some letters/sounds they begin to use letter strings in their writing and as they begin to hear the sounds in the words, they will write what they can hear (e.g. crt may be carrot on a shopping list.)

Children will then begin to write short sentences Children will then begin to write short sentences. We encourage children to use capital letters, finger spaces and full stops when writing. Children will use the sounds they know. As we have said before our language system is very complicated. We encourage children to write phonetically even if the spelling isn’t always correct (see field in this example).

This develops further and we begin to encourage the correct spelling of high frequency words such as like.

Later children will begin to think about how their writing is structures. They will use punctuation more accurately. All this takes time to develop and children will develop at different rate. The expectation for the end of reception is to be able to write short sentences independently. These sentences should be able to be read by themselves and others. In order to prepare children for year 1 we provide children with opportunities to write more extended pieces of writing.

Why teach writing Vital life skill Used daily For a variety of purposes (shopping list, postcards, letters, telephone messages, order forms, menus, labels, instructions, etc) Writing is an essential skill and something we use daily. When at home encourage children to write for a purpose. If the children can see a purpose for their writing they are more likely to engage with it.

Handwriting Cursive Rhymes to support with the letter formation (e.g. up we go, slither down the snake and off we go) We teach children to write in a cursive style throughout school and this starts in reception. We have rhymes to support the formation which can be found on the sounds sheets that come home.

Helping at home with reading and writing Share stories at home Read reading books at least 3 times Practise sound sheets at home (sound and letter formation) Practise high frequency words Encourage writing for a purpose