Nursery The children will choose a book from the classroom to bring home three times a week. Please take this opportunity to talk about their choice of book, the story, predict the ending, talk about characters and pick out familiar words or letters. Please note down in the Home-Link Book any comments that your child makes about the book. The children also visit the Library once a week and choose a book to bring back to read in the classroom. We follow the DfE Letters and Sounds Primary Framework for phonics, which involves short 10 minute activities. We focus on general sound discrimination, sound patterns, rhythm and rhyme, hearing sounds within words, re-enacting familiar stories and alliteration. This also develops children’s speaking, listening, understanding and comprehension skills. The class teacher may send home reading books (usually in the Summer Term) once they feel a child is ready for them. This will depend on the child’s phonic knowledge as well as their ability to hear sounds within words and be able to recognise some familiar words. Reception The children read individually to an adult in School at least twice a week and we will send home three reading books a week. Children also participate in shared reading, when the teacher works with the whole class or a group, sometimes using a ‘big book’, to teach strategies and skills needed for reading. Another reading activity is guided reading, when an adult works with a small group of children who all have copies of the same text that they read together. This consolidates a range of reading strategies and develops confidence. The children visit the Library once a week and choose a book to take home. Children are taught to hear and say the sounds (phonemes) that make up different words. They learn about the letters or groups of letters that represent these phonemes and are taught how to use these when reading and writing. We continue to follow the DfE Letters and Sounds Primary Framework for phonics, as in the Nursery classes. This involves a daily 10-15 minute session with the whole class or in half class groups to focus on hearing sounds within words, letter recognition and recall, blending of sounds to read words and segmenting sounds to be able to write words. Individual whiteboards are used during these sessions to aid letter formation and to write words and sentences, again in order to build confidence. Guidance for parents/carers on how to help their child with his or her reading is given at the front of the Home-Link Book. In addition hand- written notes from staff, describing how reading has progressed on a particular day, help to build a picture of your childs reading development. Parents/carers are encouraged to write comments about whether their child enjoyed the story, if they re-read a favourite part, how much of the book was read independently and any comments the child has made about the book. Please initial the comment box when you have read with your child. We hope you will attend the Reception Reading Workshop for parents/carers held during the Michaelmas Term.
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