Reading

Reading with Your Child Can Be Fun!

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Reading with boy 4506329-1801x2700 (2)

The importance of reading to, and with, your child can’t be over emphasized. The more your child is exposed to words and enjoys the reading experience the quicker they will learn to read for themselves.

Reading with your child enables you to introduce them to new words and language structures which they will not come across in their everyday interactions. You can explain these words, through reading with your child, and help them to develop an understanding of their meaning. If a child likes the sound and rhythm of these new words or language structures they will, over time, start to use them in conversations with others and during imaginative play.

Reading to, and with, your child is such an important activity, however knowing how to keep it fun and to get the most out of the experiences is not always clear. This is why we are re-running our popular six-week series on ‘Developing and Supporting Your Child’s Reading Journey’

Each week we will look at a different reading skill element, giving example games and activities you can use to support and develop your child through:

  • Play
  • Drawing/Writing
  • Book Sharing
  • Talk & Song

‘Developing and Supporting Your Child’s Reading Journey’ Series:

  • Week 1. How to develop a child’s interest in books and reading.
  • Week 2. Phonological awareness skills required for reading.
  • Week 3. Vocabulary development for comprehension.
  • Week 4. Print awareness to develop understanding of reading conventions.
  • Week 5. Narrative skills to support the understanding of different writing styles.
  • Week 6. Letter knowledge.

The Importance of Context

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Bank 2

Some words lose their meaning if they are not given in context, for instance, if I say the word ‘bank’ and do not give any other verbal or written clues what do I mean?

The word on its own could mean a couple of things the bank of a river or sand bank or a bank where I can collect money. If it is not put into a context its meaning is unclear.

Some words, such as homonyms and homophones, need to be heard or read within a specific context if we are to understand what the word means.

Homonyms are words which are pronounced and spelt the same; therefore, their meaning can only be truly understood when the context in which the word is being used is made clear. For instance, the word ‘bark’ can be used to mean the bark on a tree or the noise a dog makes.

Homophones are words which are pronounced (sound) the same but have a different meaning and are spelt differently such as ‘pair’ and ‘pear’, ‘their’ and ‘there’ or ‘two’, ‘to’ and ‘too’.

To view more examples, follow this link:  http://bit.ly/2BcUa8N

Why Poor Eye Tracking and Spatial Awareness Skills Affect #Reading

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Eye tracking & spatital 1

Eye tracking is the ability to control and coordinate the fine eye movements that allows us to:

  • Read a line of print by moving our eyes from left to right, without moving the head.
  • To focus and move the eyes to follow an object, without moving the head, in all directions.
  • To track/follow objects near and far.
  • To focus on one object without moving the eyes.

Eye tracking difficulties can have a dramatic effect on a child’s ability to read fluently and with ease due to the fact that they do not see the print in the same way as people with good eye tracking skills.

Typical problems due to poor eye tracking skills:

  • They lose their place, skip words or transpose them.
  • They use a finger to help keep their place.
  • Some will turn their head sideways to read or write.
  • Others may cover one eye to read.
  • They hold their head close to the table when looking at things, reading, writing and drawing.

Good spatial awareness enables us to be aware of the space around us and our position in that space, as well as the relationship between ourselves and objects. This also includes our ability to see and understand the spacing of text and pictures on a page, to distinguish between paragraphs, sentences, words and individual letters.

Spatial awareness difficulties can have a dramatic effect on a child’s ability to read fluently and with ease due to the fact that they do not see the print in the same way as people with good spatial awareness skills.

Typical problems due to poor spatial awareness skills:

  • They lose their place, skip lines and words or transpose them.
  • They use a finger to help keep their place.
  • Comprehension can be difficult as text is mis-read.

For more information on how to identify eye tracking and spatial awareness difficulties as well as activities to help support and develop these skills use these links (they will take you to the relevant pages on our Teach Handwriting website):

The Impact of Poor Visual Memory Skills on #Reading

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Visual Memory 2

Good visual memory skills enable us to recall information that has been previously visually presented.

Visual memory difficulties can hinder a child’s ability to read fluently and with ease due to the fact that they cannot always remember what the word looks like, even though it may be a very common sight word which has been taught to them many times before.

 

Typical problems due to poor visual memory skills:

  • Difficulty in recognising some letters and numbers, especially those they may not use very often, for example some of the capital letters.
  • Have problems learning sight words, or remembering what a word is, from one page to another.
  • Reading is slow and stilted, making comprehension difficult.

For more information on how to identify visual memory difficulties see our Other Physical Skills Assessment from our Teach Handwriting website: http://bit.ly/2P5jS44

For games and activities to help support and develop visual memory skills use this links: http://bit.ly/2M350S1

Why do we ask children to #read out aloud?

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Other reading stuff 1

We ask children who are learning to read to ‘read out aloud’, but forget to tell them why. It is not just so we can hear they have decoded a word correctly. The important point is to encourage them to actively listen to what they are saying. The idea is that if they hear the words they will, if it is part of their vocabulary, understand their meaning and therefore fully comprehend the text they have read.

Many children, and grown-ups for that matter, do not enjoy or find reading difficult.

So, keep it short, simple and practical. We read all sorts of things as part of our daily activities but do not always ask our children to do the same or read them out aloud. If getting your child to read from their school reading books is proving to be a battle every day then don’t do it. Try getting them to read other things instead, such as:

  • Packets/tins food labels and the cooking instructions;
  • Simple recipes for meals you might cook (these can be from a book, magazine, phone, notepad or laptop),
  • Ask family and friends to write a text or what’s App message to your child//children every day or two and get them to read them out aloud to you.
  • 1 or 2 paragraphs from a suitable article about something they are interested in or enjoy, football, ballet, computer game reviews etc… (these can be from a book, magazine, phone, notepad or laptop). We all like to share information about things that are important to us.

Remember it is not about the number of pages they read but that they are understanding what they are reading and hopefully get an enjoyment from the experience. Who doesn’t like to read a message or letter from family or friends!

What is ‘The Simple View of Reading’?

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Simple view of reading 1.jpg

The term ‘Simple View of Reading’ used by schools may seem strange as there is nothing simple about learning to read.

‘The Simple View of Reading’ was adopted by the Government in 2007 and now underpins the English National Curriculum’s programmes of study for reading at Key Stage 1 and 2.

Even though reading, the ability to decode the word and extract the correct meaning of the words, is a complex set of skills; ‘the Simple View of Reading’ conceptual framework (Stuart et al. 2008, cited Hoover and Gough, 1986) reduces it down to two key components:

  • Word recognition – the ability to decode unknown words and recognise printed words.
  • Language comprehension – the ability to understand the spoken words and use this process to understand the written text.

Reading Comprehension = Decoding x Linguistic Comprehension

So in theory a child’s reading comprehension ability can be predicted by looking at their decoding and linguistic (spoken language) comprehension abilities (Johnston & Watson, 2007).

When using ‘the Simple View of Reading’ as the basis for teaching reading it becomes clearer as to why:

  • A high quality phonics scheme is required, which the Rose Report (2006) explains ‘…is not a  ‘strategy’ so much as a body of knowledge, skills and understanding that has to be learned.’ (page 20) [This teaches children how to decode.]
  • A language rich environment to develop and encourage linguistic comprehension is vital.

Bibliography

Johnston.R. and Watson.J. ‘Teaching Synthetic Phonics’, 2007, Pub: Learning Matters, Sage Publication Ltd.

Rose.J. ’Independent review of the teaching of early reading: final report March 2006’ Pub: DfES Publications

 ‘The simple view of reading and evidence based practice’ Rhona Stainthorp Institute of Education, Reading University, Morag Stuart, Institute of Education, University of London (2008) Pdf downloaded from internet

Why do we ask children to ‘read out aloud’?

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Reading with boy 4506329-1801x2700 (2)

Reading is the ability to first decode the letter sequence of the word (phonics) and then to place meaning to it in relation to the context in which it is being used.

Unfortunately, many children just decode, speak and do not actively listen to what they have said, so they do not gain meaning from the words they are reading (poor reading comprehension skills).

We ask children who are learning to read to ‘read out aloud’, but forget to tell them why. It is not just so we can hear they have decoded a word correctly. The important point is to encourage them to actively listen to what they are saying. The idea is that if they hear the words they will, if it is part of their vocabulary, understand their meaning and therefore fully comprehend the text they have read.

Poor reading comprehension skills may also occur because a child has a limited vocabulary usage and/or understanding. A language rich environment is vital to help support and develop a child’s vocabulary and linguistic comprehension, which in turn, will support their reading comprehension skills.

Are your child’s phonics skills good for their age?

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Phonological Awareness chart 2

With more and more expected of our pre-school and 4 to 7 year old children it can be difficult to know what the realistic age appropriate skills are in relation to phonics.

In fact, phonics is only part of the story starting in stage 8 of 10 of a child’s phonological awareness development.

Stage 1 to 7 of a child’s phonological awareness, what we refer to as pre-phonics skills, are the continual development of their understanding and knowledge of our spoken language as well as other communication forms, such as gestures, facial expressions, body language and social conventions.

Stage 8 to 10 of a child’s phonological awareness, the phonics reading and writing stages are the continual development of their understanding and knowledge for learning to reading and write.

As a child’s phonological awareness skills build on each stage, the age at which a child reaches them varies making it difficult to know how your child is doing.

In our ‘The Ten Stages of Phonological Awareness’ section of our website (https://www.teachphonics.co.uk/phonological-development.html ), we recognise this variation and use age ranges as a rough guide to help you understand where your child is in their phonological awareness skills.

By clicking on the various stages of phonological awareness you will find appropriate age range information, advice and activities to support your child. Try not to jump a stage as each one is important in unlocking the knowledge and skills for the stage above.

Back to School – What is Phonics?

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Phonic 1

With the new school year under way some of you will have been introduced to phonics for the first time.

Phonics is the simple process of linking sounds to letters, its complexity comes from how many sound (phoneme) to letter (grapheme) combinations there are. So, to be good at phonics a child needs to know the 44 sounds and numerous letter and letter combinations of English and then learn the associations between the two.

Children can communicate orally from an early age; it is when they move to the written word that they need to learn how to decode text, to turn the letters into words they already know.

Using phonics knowledge for reading entails:

  1. Identify the letter or letter combination, in a word, that represent a sound
  2. Associate the letter or letter combination to one of the 44 sounds
  3. Blend each of the sounds together to form the word
  4. Recognise the now oral word to extract its meaning

The theory supporting the teaching of reading using phonics, especially synthetic phonics, is that if a child can decode a word by associating individual sounds to a letter or combination of letters they will then be able to blend those sounds together to form and say the word.

Once a word has been spoken they will extract its meaning by using their far more extensive spoken language comprehension. Children are therefore using the same mental processes to understand written text and speech.

Letter & Sound Relationships That Break the Phonics Rules

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Back in September we explained that Phonics is very useful as a decoding tool used for developing reading skills and an encoding tool for spelling. It is the simple process of linking sounds to letters, its complexity comes from how many sound (phonemes) to letter combinations (graphemes) there are.

Some letter and sound associations just don’t follow the normal phonics rule of a single sound being associated to a letter or letter combination. A few letters represent two sounds, such as the letter ‘u’ which in the word ‘cupid’ represents the two sounds /y,(j)/ and /oo,(uː)/.

A more common one letter two sound relation is that of the letter ‘x’ representing the two sounds /k,(k)/ and /s,(s)/ as in the words: six and box.

Here are some other examples of single letters and split digraphs making two sounds instead of the usual phonics rule of only making one sound:

More than 1 sound 1