Home reading is a classroom based borrowing scheme that provides each child with a suitably levelled text to read at home. It is an opportunity to practice and reinforce at home, what is being learnt in class and should be a positive reading experience for your child and yourself. It is also a chance for your child to experience success.
Your role in home reading:
- to provide time (a 10 min positive reading experience is better than 30 mins of torture)
- to provide 1 on 1
- to help build routine
- to provide encouragement
- to make it enjoyable
- to monitor reading behaviours and provide specific feedback to your child
- to be a positive role model
How is the scheme structured?
- Levelled texts in boxed sets in classrooms
- Teacher listens to each child read, and then matches them with a suitably levelled text
- Children take this book home to read and return it to school
- Teachers keep Running Records to track progress
- Children progress through levels at their own pace.
Cheat sheet for home reading
What to say when….
When your child stops (passive)
- Why have you stopped?
- Put your finger under the tricky word, Can you make the first sound?
- What word starts with …. and could go there and make sense?
- Can the picture help you?
When your child appeals for help (says “I don’t know that word”)
- What word could go there and make sense?
- Did you check the picture for clues?
- Can you make the first sound in the tricky word?
- Do you know any other parts in that word?
When your child makes an error (and doesn’t notice)
- Wait until the end of the sentence/page (they might notice and try do something about it)
- “Did that make sense to you?”
- “You said: ….. Can we say it like that?”
- “You said:… Does that make sense?”
When your child makes an error and attempts to correct it
- I love the way you noticed your own mistake and tried to fix it!
- You noticed that it didn’t sound right or make sense and you went back to try and fix it up. Well done!
- I like the way you went back, because a good reader finds their own mistakes and fixes them. Then they read the sentence smoothly.