How to Support Reading at Home
This information leaflet has been produced to guide you in some strategies that you can employ at home to help develop your child’s reading skills. It is important to understand that a child’s ability to read fluently and expressively, whilst important, is not how their reading will be assessed in school. Rather it is their understanding of what they have read that will be commented upon. There are different styles of questions that will be asked in comprehension tasks: literal questions when the answer can be simply lifted from the text: deductive questions, where the reader must look for clues in order to formulate an answer and inference questions, which are the most challenging. Here the reader is asked to comment upon an author’s use of language or literary features and the effect upon the reader. Answers require giving evidence and often quotes from the text.
General Tips Find some time to talk about the book as well as reading it. Start with the title, look at the title and briefly talk about what you might find inside. At the bottom of each page, encourage your child to predict might happen next. If your child gets stuck, ask what word would fit best, ask them to sound it out (if appropriate) or simply supply the word yourself. If your child misreads a word without changing the meaning, eg ‘Dad’ for ‘Father’, accept it. If they hesitate, repeat a word or leave one out, say nothing provided the meaning is not lost. Encourage your child to retell the story you have just shared. This will give you an idea of how much they have understood. Never describe a book as ‘too easy’ or ‘too hard’. Children need a range of reading materials. An ‘easy’ book helps them to relax with reading. A difficult book can be read to your child. Both are important.