Mildmay Infants and Nursery School. Sharing Books

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1 Mildmay Infants and Nursery School Sharing Books

2 The idea of this booklet is to give you some background information about the schools approach to reading and to give you some useful ideas for reading and sharing books. Sharing books best describes the approach that we advocate as a school, both adult and child taking an active part in reading. The aim should be to encourage your child to enjoy the experience of reading.

3 Sharing books is only one of the many activities that the children will undertake to develop their literacy skills, but it is still a vital one. Our staff value your help in developing your child s understanding and enjoyment of books. All children whilst in school will have opportunities to share and read books individually and in groups with staff. Reading in school goes beyond just the reading book your child chooses.

4 Children are engaging with a variety of reading experiences all the time. How children learn to read. Share books together The best and most natural way for children to learn to read is through having books read to them. Children who share books with adults from their earliest years are most likely to become fluent and enthusiastic readers. Children learn to speak by listening and imitating supported and encouraged by adults. In the same natural way children can learn to

5 read. The age at this happens will vary from child to child. Generally children will appear to just listen to a story but in fact they are learning a great deal about books and language. Later they may begin to ask questions, comment on and point out details. Next they may begin to join in, finish off sentences, repeat familiar phrases or guess at a rhyming word. They may also begin to read along with you or read aloud a whole book from memory especially if it is a firm favourite. Eventually they will build up a sight vocabulary of words they can recognise quickly. These are natural stages, although not every child may experience them

6 all or in the same way. They are setting the child on the road to becoming an independent reader. To be able to achieve this children need support from adults who will gradually help them to take over more and more of the reading process. Beginning Readers Give lots of encouragement and praise especially when your child helps with reading or is reading. Your child needs to feel positive about their reading experiences.

7 Children can be apprehensive if you ask them to read to you. It is a good idea to say Can I read with you? or Would you like to come and read with me? Let your child choose the book they would like to read. If they are unsure about what to choose encourage them perhaps by identifying a book with a theme which is of interest to your child or talk to them about an interesting front cover or remind them how a particular book might be like one they have read before. Try to find a comfortable place to read where the child can see the print and illustrations clearly.

8 It is often a good idea to begin by looking at the illustrations and discuss the story from these. Allow plenty of time for these sorts of discussions. Reading the illustrations is a very important part of learning to read. Point to the words as you are reading without making your reading sound stilted. Modelling this 1:1 correspondence with the words help your child to make a connection between what is said and the printed text. Allow time to look at the illustrations these are just as important. Encourage your child to turn the pages and use other features of a book such as flaps, pop ups and sliders. Ask questions such as, What do you think will happen next? If your child wants to re read a book or read

9 more than one book encourage and continue as long as your child is interested. Developing readers. Some children will be confident to do some reading for themselves. Perhaps let your child decide how much help they would like to read. You can always begin by asking, Shall I read or will you? Would you like to take it in turns to read a page each? If they want to read the book themselves let them try. You may find you need to read the story to the child before they attempt to read it. This a good strategy, after all you want to make reading feel as easy and as enjoyable as possible.

10 If your child starts to read along with you drop your voice so they can hear themselves more easily. Only increase the volume of your voice if they struggle or lose confidence. Whilst reading they may well get a word wrong. This is not necessarily a problem and sometimes may not need correcting if the guess has made sense. For example they may read Good boy Spot instead of Good dog Spot. Their error has not affected the sense of what they are reading and doesn t really need to be corrected. If they do struggle over most of the words suggest that you share the reading. When they have finished

11 reading you could say I loved that story, can I read it now? and re read the story to them. Strategies to help your child read an unknown word as they develop and become more confident. Praise your child for guessing if it is a good guess, even if it is incorrect, then give them the correct word. Good guesses can be ones where they have used a word that starts

12 with the correct phoneme, it looks like to word on the page or fits with the context of the story. Give them time to think of the right word. Tell them if they don t know it. Encourage your child to use the illustrations to support guesses. Encourage children to use the first phoneme to make a guess. Remember segmenting and blending phonemes or sounding out can be a useful strategy. Beware of letting your child become too over reliant on this strategy. English is an

13 irregular language and sometimes they need to use other strategies too. Encouraging your child to re read a sentence can sometimes be useful. Or ask them to re read the sentence and miss out the unfamiliar word so they can use the whole sentence to help make a guess. Remember your aim should be to encourage your child to enjoy the experience of reading.

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