Reading at home

Reading Books  

Your child will be bringing home books specially selected to support their reading journey. As guidance has been updated we have reviewed the books children will be using.  A few weeks after children start in reception they will bring home a phonic shared reader book each week which contains the GPCs they have learnt in class that week.   

As phonic and shared reading lessons carry on into year 1 the children will continue to bring home a phonic shared reading book weekly.  Some children will continue with daily phonic lessons in year 2.

When children are confident recognising and stretching to read most of the GPCs taught so far, and can also read most red words (common exception words) they will also begin to bring home a ‘reading for pleasure’ book – these books have a coloured sticker and number on them.  The point at which this will happen will be different for each child depending on their personal reading journey.   

All  children will also bring home a library book which they have chosen in their library slot. Your child's class teacher will let you know when their library slot is so the book can be brought back and changed. 

If you have any questions about reading books or the strategies listed please get in touch with your child's teacher. 

How you can help  

Our 'reading strategy checklist' poster can found below and on the inside front cover of your child's reading diary.  This checklist will support you when you are listening to your child read. If they are stuck on a word you can refer to it prompting them to try a strategy, developing their independence as a reader.  

The first strategy has the acronym GPC within it:      

 I can look for GPCs that I know , I can stretch and read

GPC is short for 'grapheme-phoneme correspondence', and it means the relationship between a phoneme (unit of sound e.g. sss) and its graphemes (or symbols e.g. the letter /s/). We use this term with children right from reception.  Learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences helps children to stretch and read a word.  

c-ar-p-e-t 

car-pet 

carpet 

Good readers make good learners.

Children who enjoy reading do well at school and in everything.

'If children are confident readers, they will not only do well in reading and writing tasks, they will be able to understand what is being taught in every other subject: science, history, geography and even maths.' (The Book Trust)

How can you help?

Hear your child read for about ten minutes, as often as possible – every day if you can but aim for at least three  times a week.

Starting off

• Read in a quiet place - turn the TV off, sit together and encourage your child to hold the book and turn the pages independently.
• Look at the title, front cover and blurb - talk about what the book might be about.
• Say "This book is called…It is about…"
• Before reading a book for the first time, look through the book with your child, talk about what is happening in the pictures, and what might happen at the end. Don’t read it to your child.
• Phonic books- inside the front cover of each book are the sounds covered in the book -these are the sounds your child is learning in school. Ask your child to read the sounds, read the sounds in words (green words) and then read the red words - these are common exception words also known as tricky words. 
• NOW start reading the book.