Tips for reading to your child and encouraging writing at home

Reading helps your child's wellbeing, develops imagination and has educational benefits too. Just a few minutes a day can have a big impact on children of all ages. Family and home life have a very important impact on a child's literacy and language learning.

Here are some tips to help enjoy story time together:

• Read aloud regularly to your child, sit in a comfortable place, cuddle up and enjoy a story. Add funny voices to bring character to life and reread favourite stories and most importantly have fun! 
• Give your child a choice as to what to read. This will make them feel more interested in the story.
• Turn off the TV and all distractions.
• Sit close and encourage the child to hold the book and turn the pages.
• Look at and talk about the pictures, guess what they think will happen next. 
• Ask questions and talk about the book. Picture books can be great for children to discuss their feelings about situations in stories. Give them space to talk about the stories and how it makes them feel.
• Read yourself. Model your love for books to encourage them to read.
• Talk about books, make connections and discuss stories read.
• Join the library for free and ensure your child has a good choice of reading materials.
• Give books as presents and encourage children to swap books with friends.
• Keep reading together. Even older children love to share stories.
• Read a recipe and bake together. 
• Read signs out and about in the environment.

Paired Reading/Shared Reading:
If your child lacks confidence to read alone try paired reading. There are different types of paired reading try them all to see which works for you and your child.

Assisted reading: Read a part of the text and the child takes over at an agreed point-read every second paragraph or every second page. If your child comes to an unknown word, you give them 4 seconds and
then read the word for them.

Chorus reading: Parent and child read aloud together. Listen carefully so you know that your child is able to read with you most of the time.

ECHO reading: You read the sentence and then you and the child read the sentence together. Finally the child reads the sentence alone. This is useful if your child is experiencing significant difficulties.

If a child is reading without expression try asking them to read the same paragraph again but with feeling.

Reading and acting out lines is a great way to build fluency. This can be great fun if you really exaggerate and use different accents.

In school, your child will be exposed to the following strategies. You could try some of
these ideas at home.

Questions to ask before, during and after reading:

• Start with a conversation about the book. Discuss the book, the title, the pictures.
• Predicting: What do you think this book is about? What do you think will happen next? Why do you
  say that?
• During reading: Making Connections:
• Can you make a connection between this story and something that happened to you? Does this
  remind you of another book/story/film
• Visualising: Making a picture in your head as you read can help understand the text better. Could you draw a
  picture of what you’ve read? Discuss the sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch of the images in their minds created by the story.
• Declunking:
  If your child is stuck on a word, give them time then….. Help them break it up and sound it out
   Read the sentence before and after the word to help “guess” the word.
• Seeking Clarification: During reading children can struggle to make sense of what they are reading. They need to stop and think, reread a paragraph, read on and see if they can make sense.
  You can help them to make sense of the story by talking about what is happening, explaining and
  asking questions.
• Questioning:
  Your child can start to ask questions about the story and what is happening. Now that you have read this far, have you any questions about the story up to now? I wonder why...?/Why do you
  think…..? Who? What? Where? When? What did that mean?
• Inferring: Sometimes the reader needs to make inferences. Using the clues in the story get the child to make
  a judgement or deduction. “After reading that what do you think? It could mean that….
• Vocabulary:
  Introducing new words that the children may not hear spoken daily is important. Children may have a “Word a Day/Night” for homework. Encourage them to use the word in their daily chat and discussion.
  When reading ask them to look for clues in the text that might help them to figure out what an unfamiliar word means. These activities can be used throughout the reading process in any order where appropriate.

Reading and writing are linked, success in one skill helps the other. 

Tips for writing at home:

• Take pictures, make books or write captions about them.
• Make and write birthday cards, write thank you cards, place cards for the table, menus or write messages to friends.
• Use chalk outside, magnetic letters on a fridge or white boards to write names, words or sentences.
• Play writing games - pick a letter, practice writing it, find it in story books.
• Find a picture they like and write a sentence about it.
• Read newspapers, catalogues, leave messages in their lunchboxes and ask them to reply.
• Write on the sand at the beach, in compost or in snow.
• Write grocery lists for shopping.
• Older children could write to a pen pal or write in a diary.
• Write a book review of a book read together.

Most importantly make reading and writing fun!!