Listening and Talking

We talk about phonological awareness being an important building block to your child’s literacy development. Listening to words and the sounds in them are vitally important. Pupils should be able to identify words that sound the same – rhyming words. Many children’s books are written to include rhyming words. If you stop reading at the rhyming words in a story, your child should be able to suggest a word that would be a suitable rhyme. Other aspects we look for children to be able to identify are the sounds in words, syllables in single words, the number of individual words that make up a sentence and also where we pause and stop in reading.

The value of listening and talking skills are often underrated but they have such a profound effect on how well your child interacts in class. At home, children should be encouraged to take turns in games and wait patiently for their turn. Modelling taking turns in family discussions is invaluable, as is providing opportunities for asking and answering questions. Children should practise taking their time speaking and saying words clearly. Often our pupils say words incorrectly and therefore they struggle to spell them properly. If you hear your child saying words incorrectly please gently correct them by repeating the words properly back to them. Common words we hear pronounced incorrectly are:

• the (luh, leh)
• went (whent)
• were (where)
• because (coz)
• I (ah)
• when (wen)
• what (wot)