1. Reading Workshop – October 17th 2017
The Federation of The Downs and Northbourne Church of England Primary Schools
Reading Workshop – October 17th 2017

2. Our Intentions for this afternoon
To explore the ‘science’ behind reading.
To explain how we teach your child to read.
To find out how you can help your child catch the reading bug!

3. It can be a long and frustrating task to help your child learn to read so it is important to put ourselves in their position to understand the challenge they face.
The ‘science’ behind reading

4. Welcome to The Downs. The = the = e
First they need to understand that the squiggles represent letters and that letters together make words.
Imagine being presented with this and being asked to read it. This is what it is like for children looking at words.
The first thing we do is start to unpick the meaning of individual letters.
= e
Then we look at learning key words.
The = the
As we learn all the letters we will be able to decode the sentence.
Welcome to The Downs.

5. …. need many individual skills
….need many individual skills. Each skill is like an individual thread – only when they are used together do we become a good reader.
What are the individual threads?
Knowing story pattern/language.
Knowing sentence structure.
Knowing a wide variety of words and their meaning.
Recognising individual sounds/words.
Knowing how to segment and blend sounds.
Learning to read is a complicated skill and there is not one way which suits all children. However, the first step is the same for everyone – TALK
If you only focus on reading words your child will not become a good reader. They become a child who barks at print with no understanding of what they’ve read.

6. How do we teach reading in school? f is sounded as ‘ffff’ not ‘eff’
Step One:
1. We talk about and share books!
2. We act them out.
3. We predict what might happen.
4. We think about how we would feel if we were that character.
Step Two: Learning the individual sounds
We focus on pure sounds not letter names.
For example:
e is sounded as ‘eh’ not ‘eee’
f is sounded as ‘ffff’ not ‘eff’
Once the children are happy using the sounds they can begin to segment words within their reading. c-a-t cat
Step Three:
Sound talk
Blending: The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word e.g: c-a-t = cat
Segmenting: The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds e.g: cat = c-a-t.
Step Four:
Sight vocabulary
Learning the words which frequently come up which cannot be sounded out. They need to be learnt by sight and recalled quickly e.g. the, was, said.

7. The Reading Bug is the one bug you want your child to catch so how can we work together to catch it?
In school we read a variety of texts with the children. We encourage you to do the same at home. Show excitement around books and texts if you want your child to get this bug!

8. How can you help at home? Use letter sounds and letter names.
You will find many of your children are already reading as they recognise words in their everyday life.
Use letter sounds and letter names.
Write in lower case letters.
Encourage your child to recognise letters in their environment; street names, signs, packets, brand labels.
How can you
help at home?

9. It is important to use the phonics resources that your child brings home.

10. How can you help at home?
Most importantly read with your child. Make it an enjoyable, daily routine that you both look forward to!
Praise your child for trying out words or recognising the words around them.
Sing an alphabet song together.
Play ‘I spy’ using the letters that you know they have learnt.
Play with magnetic letters, using some two-grapheme (letter) combinations, eg: r-ai-n = rain blending for reading and rain = r-ai-n segmenting for spelling.

11. Early Reader Activities
Sound Match
Children will have a selection of pictures, individual letters and a missing letter from a word. They need to match the pieces together to make a word for each picture.
Word building activities
Children will have a selection of sounds which they need to put together to build the word.

12. Early Reader Activities
Word Match
Children will have a selection of pictures and words. They need to read the words and find the matching picture.
Caption Match
Children will have a selection of pictures and captions which they need to put together.

13. Early Reader Activities
Reading Books
Our reading scheme is in colours. Your children will progress through these levels at their own pace. This is not a race.
Within each colour level there are numbers 1-4. This is not progressive but enables the class teacher to direct the children to specific books within their level.

14. Early Reader Activities
Story sacks
These are a great resource for early readers as you can bring the stories alive using the props. If the child does not know the story they will need you to share it with them first. Encourage them to retell the story to develop their story language skills.

15. Not all children will learn at the same rate
Not all children will learn at the same rate! Every child is different and that’s what makes your child an individual.
Your child should be supported whatever their rate of learning.
There is a very close link between difficulty with phonics and hearing, so if your child is making progress slower than expected, it is worth having their hearing checked.
Remember, all of our members of staff are here to support you and if you have any concerns about your child, please come and speak to one of us.