Westwood Academy. Bug Club Workshop – 28 th January 2015.

Workshop objectives.  To introduce Bug Club.  To show you how to access Bug Club and the different parts of the application.  To look at how to use books in Bug Club and to access the activities that support the progress of the child as they read.  To identify how you can help support your child with their reading.

What is Bug Club?  Bug Club is a finely-levelled reading scheme, which ensures that all children can find reading material with exactly the right challenge for them. What’s more, the online e-books are found in a personalised website for each child that links to other internet based learning that the school is now using...  Grammar and Spelling Bug supports children to develop grammar and spelling skills through videos, with games to practice their skills.  Abacus is a numeracy scheme that supports learning in school and at home across all the mathematical content of the new curriculum.

Accessing Bug Club.  It should work on all platforms! In school we use it on Windows PC’s, Macs, Ipads and Chromebooks successfully.  Bug Club, Grammar and Spelling Bug and Abacus are all accessed through the same site:  Each child has a user name, password and requires a school code which is wect.  Entering this information will open up each child’s individual home page…

How you can support your child with Bug Club.  The reader: until they are fluent readers, younger children will benefit from reading aloud to you as often as possible. By the time they are in Years 5 or 6, many children prefer to read silently to themselves. Create quiet opportunities for them to do so, but then talk to them about the book they are reading.  Sharing reading: when sharing a book with your child, try to take opportunities to talk about the book – before, during and after reading.  Before reading : look at the book cover and talk about your child’s expectations. Is the book likely to be fiction or non-fiction? Have you read other books together about these characters or by this author? What does your child think the book is going to be about?  While reading : support your child when unknown words need tackling: you can sound them out, split them into syllables, or identify suffixes and prefixes. Remind your child to listen to the words while reading them, to make sure that they make sense. Have a ‘meaning check’ every now and again to ensure that your child understands the text.  After reading: talk about the book. What was it about? Did it match your child’s expectations? Ask questions beginning with the words how and why to check that your child has been able to read between the lines. Ask whether anything seemed puzzling. Then ask your child to explain what the best and worst bits of the book were, and why.

And finally…  This is a new initiative for Westwood Academy, so we are still embedding it in our practice.  BUT! Where Bug Club is used at other schools, uptake is variable because reading is not given a high priority.  At Westwood, READING HAS THE HIGHEST PRIORITY! Hence this investment, hence a reading action plan to develop reading over the next year, and hence 100% use of Bug Club each week since introduction for every child in key stage 1 either at home or at school. We intend to maintain this level of usage and spread it to KS2! And all parents have a role in this – so thank you! Any questions?