Home Reading
To complement the classroom program our school expects students to read every weeknight at home.Once the children are settled into the school routine, your child will bring home a book in their home reading cover. It is very important that children enjoy reading and that they receive regular encouragement from home. Your child’s future reading habits and attitude will depend greatly on the first years of school. The home book that your child brings home may be a commercial type of book, a class book or a book that your child has written themselves and illustrated.
How to support your child’s literacy development:
Depending on the familiarity of the book and its level of difficulty you can decide whether the book should be:
- Read to your child
- Read with your child or
- Read by your child
Reading to your child shows them how reading works and that it is enjoyable and valuable. Reading aloud with your child builds confidence with reading books that may be too difficult for them to try alone.
Make a regular time for reading together. Share books brought home from school or old favourites from your own bookshelf.
Talk about the book. Use the pictures to predict what it is going to be about. Ask your child to make suggestions.
Discuss parts of the book. "Show me the cover. Where is the title? Do you know the name of the person who wrote the book?"
Show your child that reading should make sense. Tell them what to do when the meaning isn’t clear.
- Re-read a tricky section
- Look for information in pictures
- Have a go at unknown words
Read old favourites again and again to promote familiarity and confidence.
Display an interest in reading. Let your child see you reading, eg. newspaper, phonebook, magazines, novels.
Read Aloud together. Alternate who is reading...you read one page, then have your child read the next. This is good modelling for your child.
Look for clues to ‘de-code’ unfamiliar words; starting sounds, prediction using the rest of the sentence, pictures.