Reading with your Child

How you can support your child at home with reading:

Infants

Children in Year 2 will be given banded colour reading scheme book. Children will have previously been taught the sounds that they encounter in those books. These books include both fiction and non-fiction. Children in Reception and Year 1 will be given a new books each Friday to read at home 4 times during the week to develop confidence and fluency. Year 2 will move to chapter books and change their books 3 times a week when they are fluent and able to apply all the phonemes. Additional texts will also be available on the new Oxford Owl platform. To access this please click here and sign in using your child’s login - usernamexxx.306 and password. Texts will be accessible linked to the phonemes taught each term.

For useful information regarding the reading scheme or/and for a link to the Oxford Owl platform, please click here.

Juniors

Children read either book band books or chapter books. We have invested heavily in providing a wealth of genres and subjects for children to choose from.

Reading at Home

At Forestdale there is an expectation that children read at home everyday or at least three times a week.

Children should aim to read in out-of-school hours for:

Reception and Year 1→10 minutes
Year 2→15 minutes
Year 3→20 minutes
Year 4→25 minutes
Year 5→30 minutes
Year 6→35 minutes

Reading with Your Child

Children need to know that we read for meaning therefore these questions will ensure that they get the utmost from the book in terms of understanding and enjoyment. You may wish to record your child’s responses to the questions in their contact book. The questions get progressively harder from box 1-3.

Reading Questions Box 1	Reading Questions Box 2	Reading Questions Box 3
Do you know anything about this book already? Do you know any of the characters/people in this story? Where does the story happen? Why do you think X [a character] did that? Why do you think Y [an event] happened? What do you think will happen next? How will it end? What does the picture tell you about the information/ story?	What are the most important things that happen in this book/story? How do you know? Why did these things happen? What tells you that? Has anything like this ever happened to you? What clues in the text tell you if it is the same/ different? How did X [a character] behave? How do you know? How did X [a character] feel? Which words/phrases/illustrations tell you that? What else tells you? How do you think the author wants us to feel at this moment? What is she/he trying to do here?	If the writer asked you what could be improved in the text, what would you say? Why does the font change in this part of the story? How does the dialogue help to move the story on? Which words do you think are particularly effective? Were there words or phrases or other things to do with the language that you liked? Or didn’t like? Explain Do you know what the word means or can you work out what it means (in this sentence)? What other word could the author have used that means the same sort of thing?