Meadowbank Early Years Foundation Stage Reading Brochure 2023-2024

MEADOWBANK PRIMARY SCHOOL FOUNDATION STAGE 2 READING BROCHURE WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP YOUNG CHILDREN LOVE BOOKS AND BEGIN TO READ?

Contents Introduction .....................................03 How language unlocks learning......04 High quality interactions.................05 Conversation turn-taking................06 Teaching listening............................07 Teaching vocabulary........................08 Dialogic reading................................09 Shared narratives.............................10 The power of home learning............11 What does research say? ................12 What is phonics? ..............................13 Success For All Phonics...................14 Scope and Sequence........................15 What does phonics look like in FS?.16 Shared readers.................................17 Shared reading expectations..........18 How can I help my child? .......... 19/20 Individual reading books..................21

Introduction The aim of this booklet is to guide parents' to understand how we can work together in partnership to foster a love of reading and share the building blocks that children need to be confident and fluent readers!

Alongside the effective teaching of phonics there are many other elements in learning to read that are essential in supporting children in their journey to becoming competent readers.

A critical part of supporting early reading skills is to develop children’s language and communication skills and immerse them in a language-rich environment.

Your child is starting to read for themselves but they still need your support. By encouraging your child to read to you, being an enthusiastic listener and talking about new words and their meanings, you’ll help them to develop their reading skills and open the door to your child's early academic success.

"Language unlocks reading."

Good early language skills are crucial for children's futures. Emergent literacy stems from a foundation of oral language, which is built through the ‘back and forth’ of conversational turn-taking, exposure to a wide range of words to build vocabulary, and exposure to songs, rhymes, books and stories, including establishing regular reading habits and dialogic reading.

High Quality Interactions High quality interactions between adults (parents, carers or teachers) and young children are valuable opportunities to both support and assess language development. They may include use of contingent talk (where adults talk about what the child is doing), commenting, questioning, narration, expansions and recasts. When engaging in high quality interactions with children, we need to be highly tuned in to the child’s capabilities and motivations, while nurturing their confidence and engagement through praise and affirmation.

Conversation Turn-Taking A recent study (2018) revealed the value of conversational turn-taking. Children who experienced a higher level of conversational turns per hour with an adult had increased verbal language and greater brain activity.

Frequent conversational turns enable children to practice language and gain feedback from adults, while adults can better adjust their speech to the appropriate level of complexity to best support children’s language development.

Teaching Listening Listening is also a vital component in language teaching. Listening activities can include allocation of listening roles, including asking children to build on what they have heard, to summarise it, to compare it with other information, or to question the information to find out more!

Teaching Vocabulary It is recommended the teaching of ‘Goldilocks’ words! The method is to identify words that are not too easy or too hard but just right; they should have use beyond the immediate topic and be systematically taught and reviewed. This involves building a web of associations for new words around meaning, what they sound like, words that go with them, and how they can be used in a sentence.

Dialogic Reading Dialogic reading offers children the opportunity to extend their oral language skills, through the chance to hear a story and to talk about it. This can be approached in different ways, such as discussion about the pictures, questions about what is going to happen next, or exploring the emotional content by discussing how a character is feeling. In discussions about a story, teachers and parents can scaffold children’s language, explain new concepts or emphasise key words. The act of regularly reading together is also an opportunity to help foster a love of reading and good reading habits. Children who engage in frequent dialogic reading are exposed to a greater number and types of words which helps to expand their vocabularies, extend their listening skills and develop their narrative skills.

Shared Narratives Research indicates the power of repeatedly revisiting a story that all the children in a class have heard. This can be done through building shared narratives, enabling them to explore their responses, and allowing them to re-visit or re-create the narrative through activities such as art, drama, role play games, use of puppets and writing. Oral narrative skills are another important element for reading. Children engage in a process where each of them has the opportunity to devise their own stories, which the teacher first records and then reads aloud while the child acts out a part, and allocates any other parts to their peers!

The Power of Home Learning Language skills are shaped and nurtured by a child’s home learning environment.

Conversations, make believe play and reading activities are particularly influential and can build children’s language skills, as well as observations and interactions on trips out, such as visiting friends, or going to the shops, park or library.

From a very early age children will sit with you and share pictures and stories. They will have favourites that they want you to read to them over and over again. You and the rest of the family are role models for reading. If they see you looking at books , magazines etc they may want to copy this behaviour.

You are and have been, their first educators.

What does Research say about Reading?

Past research explained learning to read as children using a series of searchlights that they would use to decode a text. For example sounding out letters (phonics); remembering shapes of words; using pictures; thinking about what would make sense in the text. The latest thinking states that phonics should be the first reflex that a child uses to decode a text.

Other “searchlights” will still be in operation but should not be relied upon. Using pictures and remembering shapes of words can lead to guessing and therefore reading errors. Phonics is the key and once the text has been decoded, it is important to ensure children have thorough comprehension.

What is phonics?

‘Synthetic Phonics’. This is simply a way in which we break words down into the smallest sounds. So, the sounds in the word ‘cat’ are /c/ /a/ /t/. We are saying words in an unnatural, or synthetic way.

The sound that letters make either on their own or letters together.

-ch sh th ………………igh (as in night) ee (as in feet)…

-There are about 46 phonemes.

-Fast blend words by segmenting them into their individual phonemes.

(Say it fast) If I say c-a-t cat -Segment the word into individual phonemes.

(Break if down) Rain r-ai-n

-When children are tuned into sounds, then we can begin the process of showing the letter that makes that sound.

What is FFT Success for All Phonics?

FFT Success for All Phonics is a complete systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme that has been validated by the Department for Education.

The ambition of the programme is to enable success for all children and inspire a lifelong love of reading.

Validated by the Department for Education Based on the Letters and Sounds progression Provides a complete set of teaching resources, online and in print Clear reading, writing and spelling activities through the six phases of Letters and Sounds Includes a tutoring programme, FFT Tutoring with the Lightning Squad Supported by a Reading Assessment Programme Comprehensive easy-to-use resources for learning at home via the Parent Portal

Success For All Phonics Scope and Sequence

What does phonics look like in Foundation Stage 2?

To support both teachers and children, phonics lessons follow a consistent daily structure which enables lessons to be taught with pace as everybody understands the routine and what is expected.

The 25-minute lesson plan follows the same basic sequence each day: • Review previously learnt GPCs (10 minutes).

• Teach, practise and apply the new GPC (15 minutes).

Shared Readers

It is important that children don’t simply know their phonics but can apply that knowledge to the skill of reading itself. In the Success for All Phonics programme, children apply their developing phonic knowledge and skill by reading the Shared Readers. These are carefully aligned to the phonics lessons and allow children to practise reading the new and recently taught GPCs as well as the Common Exception Words to which they have been introduced.

Shared Reading Expectations

In Reception, the Shared Reader lessons are 15 minutes long in Term 1, increase to 20 minutes in Term 2, and 25 minutes in Term 3. In addition, the five-day programme also provides opportunities to develop comprehension, fluent reading and to consolidate letter formation, spelling and sentence writing.

Parents - How can I help my child?

Success for All Phonics have written lots of advice on how to support your child which you can read on our Parents Portal: https://parents.fft.org.uk/tips-for-home-reading/ Videos containing the proper pronunciation of all Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) taught in the Success for All Phonics programme.

Phonics phrases for each of the GPCs - a short alliterative phrase.

Letter Formation Cues - children learn to write lower case letters in the correct way, using a short rhyme.

Parents - How can I help my child?

A complete set of Shared Readers which can be found here is also available along with recordings of the Readers being read out loud.

Helping your child is, in fact, straightforward. Research shows that it is really important to introduce children to several new words each day, just by talking and using them together. Children also have a better chance of being a successful reader if they practice reading their decodable books and also share other exciting books for pleasure, hearing others read.

Individual Reading Books -Reading books and reading records need to be in school each day.

-Reading books will be changed twice a week, only on a Monday and Thursday.

-If you have not written a comment or signed your child's reading record, we will assume that you would like to keep the book for longer and will not change it.

If you would like any further information regarding how we teach early reading please contact Miss Carrington, Early Reading Leader or Mrs Taylor-Duffy, Literacy Leader Tel 0161 428 6286 admin@meadowbankprimary.com