As all children are now becoming increasingly confident readers I thought it might be helpful to share some top reading tips for the current stage of the children in the class.  Some parents have expressed confusion over reading expectations at this stage – hopefully this will provide some clarity. 🙂

Please remember that the main focus of all reading in Primary 1 is reading for enjoyment.  We want the children to develop a love for reading at an early age that will remain with them for life.  Reading sessions should be fun and achievable for all children without too many difficulties or ‘stumbles’ on words.

These tips can be used for all books, magazines, websites, menus etc that the children come into contact with.

Top tips

Please do not attempt all of these tips in one reading session.  These are suggestions that you could try out over a period of weeks.

If your child is feeling confident you could try getting him to read the independent books quietly by himself or to a sibling/teddy.  This encourages confidence and independence.  Look on the back of the books to see whether they are recommended for ‘guided’ or ‘independent’ use.  I have even known of some families to Skype Granny’s, Grandpa’s etc to allow the child to independently read his/her book.

Before Reading

Talk about the front cover.  What might it be about?  Is it fiction or non-fiction?  What does the title say?  If the title is a tricky title try getting your child to find some words or sounds that they know and encourage them to use the pictures as a clue.  You could tell them one word from the title and see if they can find that word – this can help to break down tricky titles into more manageable chunks. Relate the front cover to their own experience.  For example, if the story is about dogs you could chat about dogs that they have had experience with.  Ask them to predict what might happen.

On occasions you may wish to begin or end the reading session by reading the entire book to your child.  I often do this in class.  It allows children to hear an adult modelling expression, use of punctuation and reinforces key vocabulary.

During Reading

At this early stage in reading please encourage the children to look at and discuss the pictures before reading the words.  Please do not cover up the pictures – this gives children the message that using the pictures is cheating.  We do not want them to have this view.  We want them to learn that pictures can assist with reading.

Try relating the pictures to the words.  For example, if the picture shows a wet dog ask your child to find the word ‘wet’ in the text.  This reinforces that the pictures can help us and develops important skills in scanning text and most importantly encourages confidence.

Ask your child to read the words.  If they find it difficult ask them to look at the picture for a clue.  You may need to remind them of some of their tricky words like my, the, he, she etc.  You could give them some clues like ‘a’ and ‘i’ make ay or ‘s’ and ‘h’ make ‘sh’.  This can help them attempt to sound out trickier words.

Encourage your child to use feelings when they are reading.  If the story is sad they could use a sad voice or a happy/scared/baby voice. We do this in class regularly.  They can also use punctuation to give them clues how to say words and sentences too.  This is always a favourite part and all of the children love exclamation marks!

Try improving a sentence with your child.  We have just started doing this in class.  If a sentence says, ‘I like the wet dog,’ your child might suggest that ‘I like the hairy wet dog’ would be better.

Please remember that your child may have read their books twice in class before they are sent home.  It is natural for him/her to memorise some parts of the book.  This teaches him/her that there is often a pattern to stories with lots of repetition.  Much of reading is actually based on memory and the children are simply experimenting with this new skill.

After Reading

The most important thing to do after reading is to praise your child.  Even if they struggled, please try to find something that they did that was very positive.  Another very important question to ask is did they enjoy it?  Why/why not?

You could chat about their favourite part or character or, if it is a non-fiction book, you could ask them what new facts they found out.

Ask some questions about the book.  You could ask what happened first in the story, how it ended, what sad/happy/scary thing happened.  You could ask what the characters were like.

Get your child to ask you questions.  They always enjoy doing this to check you have been listening.  We have lots of teachers in the making in our class! 🙂

Word/punctuation hunt – we often finish with this at the end of a reading session because it reinforces key areas of learning and most importantly, is fun!  Ask your child to close his/her book.  Give him a word to find in his book as quickly as he can.  You could extend this by getting him/her to find a certain type of punctuation or a spelling rule e.g. magic ‘e’, ‘oo’ sound etc.

For more information please click here.  This will take you to further literacy advice provided by Education Scotland.