Enjoy Reading
How can I choose books at the right level for my child? Especially for younger children, be guided by the teacher. Most schools have some kind of system, sometimes colour-coded, by which they grade how difficult a book might be. This is particularly important when children are still learning phonics. As a rule of thumb, you would expect a child to read a book with about 95% accuracy if they want to read it to themselves. Less than that, and it’s likely that they’re missing out, or misreading too many words for them to make sense of the story. Introduce the ‘Rule of five’ to older children. Encourage them to read the first page or two of a new book. They must put up one finger for every word they cannot read. If they get to five fingers, then the book is too hard for them and they should choose another one. Don’t encourage them just to guess at words they can’t read.
When we asked authors what they liked to read to their children, a few old favourites cropped up:
Tony Bradman, author of Dilly the Dinosaur and many other books: “We enjoyed the Dogger and Alfie series by Shirley Hughes, the wonderful illustrations of John Burningham or classic picture books from Janet and Allan Ahlberg such as Each Peach Pear Plum. As my kids got older I particularly liked reading rhythmic, rhyming texts and two of my favourites were Mr Magnolia by Quentin Blake, and In The Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak – great to read aloud!” Christopher Edge, author of the DeadWays series “I read lots of Julia Donaldson’s and Axel Scheffler’s books: The Smartest Giant in Town, Tiddler, Tabby McTat - great to join in with and something in every spread for inquisitive eyes to spot.”
9
Made with FlippingBook HTML5