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?       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 NewspaperRecountsPersuasiveInformationExplanation 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 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, s, 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 s 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?

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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!