Follow up from Reception Curriculum meeting

Thank you for attending the Reception Curriculum Evening Q&A session.

It was lovely to see so many of you at our open morning/afternoon. We hope you enjoyed looking around the learning environment with your child and learning about their experiences at school.

Can we contribute to our child’s learning diary?

Yes, we are encouraging parents to send in observations weekly to add to their child’s learning diary. We will request one area of learning a week via our blog. We hope you enjoyed sharing your child’s Term 1 learning diary with them at the end of last term.

How do we know if we are pronouncing the sounds correctly?

Please click here to watch a video to see the correct pronunciation.

How can I support my child’s maths learning?

Please click here to view our Maths curriculum page. This has lots of useful ways ideas to help you to support your child’s Maths learning at home. As a school, we subscribe to NumberGym. There are lots of fun games available for your child to play at home. These games will support children to develop fluency. Click here to find out how to login and click here to go to the NumberGym login page

What kind of writing can I do at home with my child?

We would recommend writing in real life situations e.g. writing a shopping list, writing party invitations etc. Alongside this, we encourage practicing letter formation at home with your child. Please check the weekly blog to find out which letters we are practicing at school during our handwriting sessions. Click here to see the correct formation of the letters.

Where can I find information about the Reception year?

You can find out about what your child is learning in school on our blog pages. These are updated weekly and also include photos, celebrations and a noticeboard containing important messages and dates. Our school website is a really useful resource and it is continually being updated. Click here to look at the Reception overview maps where you can find out which objectives your child will be learning about each term. Click here to find out more about specific subject areas.

How can we support our children to read at home?

Each child is given one phonetically decodable book to read each week. We encourage you to hear your child read every day. Please record it in their reading log book. There is no need to record the ‘Reading for Pleasure’ book in their log book.

At Henleaze Infant School, we understand the importance of early readers re-reading the same book a number of times. We encourage teachers to read the same book aloud multiple times as well as encouraging parents’ to do this with the book their child brings home that is well-matched to their phonic skills. We know that the more we engage with a story, the more we take away from it. Re-reading allows children to develop a range of different skills that, together, combine to make them fluent and confident readers, allowing them to have greater capacity for paying attention to making sense of what they have read as they progress along their reading journey.

The first read:

The first time your child reads a book, the process relies heavily on them using their prior phonic knowledge and exercising their decoding skills. When first exposed to a book, your child’s teacher will support them to say the correct phoneme for different graphemes that will appear in the book. This is often found on the inside front cover. The children then practise sounding out and blending words which will appear in the book. Again, these words are usually found on the inside front cover. Your child will only read books containing the sounds they have been taught in school which have been well-matched to their current reading ability. 

This first read of a book is essential for your child. If words are misunderstood by your child or if they are unable to accurately sound out and blend a word it may make the story distorted and lack sense. 

Did you know?
The more exposure to books your child had, the more their vocabulary is increased. Even better, when your child re-reads the same book, they remember more than when  they are exposed to many new words in different books.

The second read:

When your child reads a book that is well-matched to their reading level for the second time, they will be focussing on reading with greater accuracy and fluency. A fluent reader is able to read a book accurately, quickly, and with appropriate expression without regular sounding out. Repetitive reading allows a child opportunity to read without, or with less, stumbling and stopping as the text becomes more familiar to them. Reading time therefore becomes more pleasant for both the reader and the reading teacher/parent. 

Did you know?
Re-reading books has a positive impact on your child’s attitude to reading. Once you child is able to master a book, it makes moving onto another one much more appealing and achievable.

The third read:

Re-reading is a key strategy for comprehension. This means that your child is focussing on their understanding of the text and reading it in the author’s intended manner. For early readers, this depth of understanding is not possible on initial exposure to a book. Each time you child reads or hears a book, they learn more about the story itself. Each journey through the book allows the child to delve deeper into meaning and prepares them for more complex narratives in their future reading journey.

Your child can demonstrate their comprehension by using something called ‘prosody’. Prosody is what music is to lyrics, it is the way your child varies their pitch, volume, tone, rhythm and pace of their voice to accurately represent what is happening in the text. 

Did you know?
Exploring the text and its illustrations when using prosody helps your child to delve deeper into the story’s message, learn new information and make connections between themselves and the book or books they have previously encountered. Comprehending a text is what makes reading pleasurable!

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