How you can help at home

We are often asked how can parents help their child at home. Do forgive us if you know the following already but here are a few ideas.

· when talking with your child always ensure you have your child’s full attention and that he/she has eye contact with you

· provide opportunities for scribbling, tracing, colouring, drawing, manipulating construction etc.

· ensure a correct sitting position and that the pencil is held correctly - between thumb and forefinger

· show interest - ask your child what ‘sound picture’ he/she has been learning about and talk about names of family/friends, familiar items beginning with that sound

· play I spy games limiting them to the sounds that you know have been covered in class

· when performing everyday tasks e.g. getting dressed, bathing, eating breakfast discuss the initial sounds of items being used

Keep sessions short - a five minute session is more beneficial than a long session. If you are unsure about the sounds of the alphabet do ask the class teacher.

When will my child bring a reading book home?

Once your child is able to recognise the majority of the ‘Basic Code’ and is confident building, manipulating and segmenting words with three phonemes he/she will take a reading book home. As children’s learning takes place at different rates some children may take a reading book home earlier than others. It is very important that your child is confident in the above activities before he/she takes a reading book home. The first reading books include a card listing words that we expect the child to read. The rest of the text is for the adult to read for the child. However, you will probably find that your child will attempt unfamiliar words by using other strategies e.g. picture clues, sense of the sentence.

At the moment your child is able to choose books from the classroom to take home and enjoy. We would like to stress that the aim of this reading is to share the book and not for the child to be asked to ‘sound out’ words, or be expected to recognise any words. They may not yet have the correct strategies for doing so. It is much more important at this stage to help them enjoy listening to and talking about the story. You will also be a good role model by pointing out that the text is read from left to right, and that a book is read through from the front to the back. These things may sound simple to us, but are important first stages in starting to read. You can ask your child if he/she can hear a word beginning with a particular sound e.g. ‘a’ (as in animal, do not use the letter name ‘ay’) or you could point out to them that a particular word begins with ‘c’ ( as in cake, not the letter name ‘see’). Do try to use sounds that you know we have covered.