Help for schools and parents during the school closure period
If there's one thing you can do to really support your children, it's getting them to read, read read.
Supporting phonics and reading
It’s really important that you follow the advice for the phonics programme your school uses. We are still encouraging children to read other books and listen to stories but for phonics practice, you must ensure fidelity to your programme. The links below will take you to videos where your children can practice the sounds and skills they know already as well as links to the reading books they can use to practice their decoding and fluency.
The most important thing that parents and carers can do is to read with and to their children and to talk about what you they read. Please don’t feel they have to teach them new sounds. This is a great opportunity to consolidate learning. Reading daily with a books matched to the sounds your child knows will help them in their reading journey. Alongside this sharing stories where you are reading them to your child and even picking out key words for them to read helps them learn how to become a storyteller. It helps children develop a love of reading and creates a quality time where you can have a great discussion around books. Commenting on what you think about the story helps children generate their responses and discussing the language such as what the word ‘dawdling’ means in the story ‘Tiddler by Julia Donaldson’ helps children to understand and use the new vocabulary. By accessing this language through sharing stories with you means that when they come to read these words then they can understand the meaning of them. For more information, have a look at this document.
Click on the links below to take you to support and advice for the phonics programme your school follows
Other things you can do to support children:
How to read deocodable books for fluency and comprehension - all programmes
