Parents may find the following set of videos helpful when supporting their young child at home with early reading and phonics skills plus numeracy concepts. ‘Learning Boosts’ are short clips, created by teachers, explaining the key teaching and learning approaches when a child is learning to read and key basic number skills For example,

• ‘Get the most out of books’
• ‘Intro to Phonics’
• ‘Letter Sounds and Actions’
• ‘Building words with blending’
• ‘Touch counting’
• Doubles and near doubles’

Learning Boosts https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwvtdkaEZAmiviwt9zvbPjd-4QKfg0wqP

We have also included the link to the video clips on our school website and will also be uploading information around how children can use decoding strategies when reading. These are strategies that are explicitly taught during reading sessions in school.

Supporting Reading at Home – Decoding Strategies

Decoding usually refers to the skills of alphabetic knowledge and letter-sound correspondence. It serves as the building block upon which all other reading instruction is built. Therefore, explicit teaching of decoding strategies is essential. These strategies help to develop independence at all ages when the reader encounters an unfamiliar word. We have focused on 12 decoding strategies that we use when delivering reading lessons. Having good decoding skills not only benefits reading but it gives the learner strategies for sounding out unfamiliar words when spelling too. These strategies can be taught spontaneously when the learner gets stuck on a word or proactively by teaching a new skill each lesson. Regularly revisiting the strategies will build confidence.

12 decoding strategies to try

· Look at the picture – this may give you a clue to what words will be on the page.

· Point to the words as you read them.

· Get your mouth ready – look at the first letter in the word. Think about what sound it makes and get your mouth ready to say that sound.

· Chunk it – look for chucks you know or for words within the word that you know, i.e. yes ter day.

· Look for rhymes – does the word look familiar such as blue and glue.

· Silent or magic ‘e’ – it makes the vowel say its own name, but it stays silent.

· Walking vowels – teach the rhyme, ‘when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking’- ai, ea, ie, oa, ue.

· Stretch out the word – make a continuous noise as you move through the letters i.e., fffff uuuuu nnnn for fun.

· Cover the ending – for words ending in ing, cover the ending to focus on the root word then add ing back on again.

· Jump over it – when you don’t know a word, jump over it and read the rest of the sentence. Then go back and try to figure it out.

· Switch the sound – think about long and short vowel sounds, soft c and g and the different sounds for y and ed.

· Double check – does it sound right? Does it look right? Does it make sense? If not try again.