Reading

At Birklands, we aim to encourage a love of reading and spend a lot of time in school sharing books together. One of the most important (and enjoyable) ways that you can support your child’s learning and development is to read together every day.

During the first few weeks, your child will be given a Little Wandle Big Cat Collins Book (all children will start on Phase 1) to read at home. They will keep the same book for one week and books will be changed in school every Tuesday.

Please keep your child’s reading book and diary together in the plastic wallet and send them into school every day. When your child reads with you, it is important to make a note in their reading diary. This is another way of encouraging their reading and showing that you value the time spent sharing books.

Here are some tips for reading with your child.

Choose a quiet time to sit down and share books together, perhaps making it part of the bedtime routine, this will ensure that your child will share a book with you every day.

Children should be encouraged to read the same book two or three times as this will develop their decoding skills, their fluency and understanding of the book.

As well as their school reading book, children will enjoy listening to you read books from home or from the library. By reading aloud to children you are introducing them to new vocabulary, sentence structures and story themes.

Talk about the cover of the book. Predict what will happen in the story. Ask questions and talk about what happened. Use the questions at the back of the book to talk about events.

Make sounds to match the story events and suggest speech for the characters.

March 2024

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