Active Literacy is based on the principal that children learn to read not just by sitting and learning words.
‘Active’ in the case of learning does not mean physically moving around all the time! It means children engage with what they are learning, participate in the class, and work with each other. It means the children don’t just simply listen and memorise.
At the beginning of their reading journey, children call on their phonemic knowledge in spelling to help them build and sound out words. Coupled with this they are asked to use their understanding and problem solving skills to show their understanding of what they read. This progresses from the use of pictures to their ability to make sense of sentences without pictures.
As they progress up the Book Band Scale, the children move from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’. This means that they have become confident readers and can now use their reading ability to read and learn new things for themselves. This transition is generally said to happen around the ‘white’ band on our scale (click here for scale).
As they continue to expand their horizons through reading, we encourage our readers to further understand any text they read by linking it to their own experiences, critically reflect and question what they have read and clarify their own understanding by doing further reading/research.
As we progress further into our new reading journey at Woodpark, your child will experience guided reading that will challenge them and make them think for themselves. They will encounter new ways of learning that they may find tricky at first, but we are already seeing greatly improved understanding and fluency down the school where the programme has been introduced in stages for a couple of years now.
This whole approach, when followed through both at school and with the support of home, has shown fantastic results in reading ability and understanding across the curriculum.
For more information on how you can support your child at home, please click here.
