Recently we held a session where parents could learn how to assist our P-2 children in their reading during the school day.
Thank you to all who attended – it was a great turn out. The great thing is it doesn’t have to be a parent; you can enlist Grandparents or Aunties and Uncles to help read. Reading intervention and parent/family involvement has a huge impact on children’s learning. You are assisting in life-long skills that will travel with the children throughout their schooling. Reading to your child every day and surrounding them with books creates daily opportunities to build reading skills.
If you would like to be involved in Parents as Partners, please do let us know by contacting meltonreception@heathdale.vic.edu.au so we can place you on the schedule.
Even if you are unable to attend the training or commit to the schedule it may be useful to use some of the strategies at home when assisting children to read.
1. When a child is reading ‘Pause, prompt and praise’. It is so important to praise your child with effective feedback when they are reading – for example “well done, you sounded out the word ‘play’ really well, you didn’t get that word last week.” This will give them good experiences when learning to read text.
2. At this age children will be memorising sight words that are used a lot. Sight words are ones that cannot be easily sounded out and need to be recognised on sight, e.g. you, I, we, am, had, and, to, the, have, they, where, was, does. The strategy for learning sight words is, ‘See the word, say the word’. Learning to identify and read sight words is essential for young children to become fluent readers. Most children will be able to learn a few sight words at the age of four (e.g. is, it, my, me, no, see, and we) and around 20 sight words by the end of their first year of school
3. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate the different sounds in words. Children's songs and nursery rhymes aren't just a lot of fun—the rhyme and rhythm help kids to hear the sounds and syllables in words, which helps them learn to read. A good way to build phonemic awareness (one of the most important skills in learning to read) is to clap rhythmically together and recite songs in unison. This playful and bonding activity is a fantastic way for kids to implicitly develop the literacy skills that will set them up for reading success.
4. Cut out simple cards and write a word containing three sounds on each one (e.g. ram, sat, pig, top, sun, pot, fin). Invite your child to choose a card, then read the word together and hold up three fingers. Ask them to say the first sound they hear in the word, then the second, and then the third. This simple activity requires little prep‑time and builds essential phonics and decoding skills (helping them learn how to sound out words). If your child is just starting out with learning the letters of the alphabet, focus on the sound each letter makes, more so than letter names.
Our children are little for such a short amount of time – make use of our library and snuggle up with your child and a good book!