This document provides parents with guidance on supporting their child's reading development at Ecton Brook Primary School. It emphasizes the importance of developing a love of reading and making it a daily habit. It outlines the school's phonics instruction and stages of reading development. Tips are provided for engaging with books at home, asking questions, and encouraging reading through setting a good example and making it an enjoyable experience.

1. Parents Guide To
Reading
Ecton Brook Primary School

2. At Ecton Brook we want your child to
become an enthusiastic and engaged
reader.
We want your children to develop a love
of reading as we feel it is the key to
being a life long learner.

3. Ten minutes a day could make a difference.

4. We can make that difference together.
Your role is to make reading enjoyable. The
more interest and enthusiasm you show in
your child’s reading, the more their
confidence will grow!
Our role is to teach the skills of reading so
that they can apply these at home.

5. How the brain works when reading?

6. Teaching of Phonics into Reading
• Phonics is the start of the children learning to read
• Phonics is the sound letters make and then a grapheme is what it
looks like.
• Phonic lessons happen every day and focus on this relationship
• Start by learning the 26 individual letter sounds (see blog)
• Move onto the more complex sounds (see blog)
• digraphs (two letters one sound)
• trigraphs (three letters and one sound)
• Once they have learnt the 42 different letter sounds and their families
they must choose the appropriate sound to use when decoding.

7. Developing Readers
• Children are introduced to reading books in
reception
• Importance of caring for books
• Using pictures to help understand the
book
• Reading cvc words and
starting to recognise
high frequency words
(these are now known
as common exception
words or sight words)

8. Reading books
• When children are more confident:-
• Work in ‘Book Talk’ to read text and respond to questions
• Taught how to complete written comprehensions
• Many literacy lessons are based on a book and different
reading skills are taught
• Skills the children will learn
• Direct retrieval of information – written in the text
• Inference – using the knowledge of the characters and the
plot
• Deduction – using their understanding of other books and
life experiences

9. Stage books
• At the start of the year children assessed and placed on a
stage book (this may change from the July)
• Children are then regularly assessed against the stages
throughout the year.
• The early stages we are looking for fluency
• Not sounding out every word.
• No hesitation on the sight words.
• Creating a flow to their reading.
• The books are changed between two and three times per
week but we do still want to see their reading records.

10. Strategies for reading at home.
• Read the book to the child or share the reading activity
• Read the words that occur frequently (names, places, objects)
• Spend time using the picture clues to make links to the sentences
• Make the book sound interesting (use different voices, etc..)
• In the second read, the children reads the book.
• Allow them time to sound out then if they cannot decode read
the word.
• Praise their efforts in decoding, reading of sight words and
fluency
• In the third read they should have more fluency.

11. In the last 5 years Ecton Brook Primary
School have spent
£45,000
replacing stage books (mostly between
stage 3-10)

12. It is important to ask questions about the book
Using our reading vipers
Vocabulary
Infer
Predict
Explain
Retrieve
Sequence

13. Phonics Screening
• Phonics screening takes place at the end of Year 1

14. SATS including Reading
• At the end of Year 2 the children will undertake tests in Maths,
Grammar and Reading.
• Their final level will be Teacher assessed with the test only one small
part of building a picture.

15. How to encourage your child to read
Read yourself! Set a good example by sharing your reading.
Let your children see that you value books and keep them at
home.
Keep books safe. Make your child their own special place to
keep their books. Show them how to turn pages carefully.
Point out words all around you. Help your child to read the
words around them: on food packets in the supermarket, on
buses, in newspapers, in recipes.
Visit your library – it’s free to join! All libraries have
children’s sections. Many also have regular storytelling
sessions.

16. How to encourage your child to read
Make time to read. Read a bedtime story with your child
every night. Encourage them to share reading with
grandparents, brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles.
Keep in touch with school. Make sure your child swaps
their home reading books regularly at school and try to
make a regular time slot of about 10 minutes to hear
them read.
If English is not your family’s first language: You can buy
dual language books. You can talk about books and
stories in any language.

17. Choice of Reading
• As well as using the stage books we would encourage this is
suplimented by a range of texts - books, comics, magazines.
• Also widen there exposure to different authors.

18. Web-links
• Letters and Sounds http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/
• Words for Life http://www.wordsforlife.org.uk/5-7
• Mr Thorne phonics https://www.youtube.com/user/breakthruchris
• Literacy shed https://www.literacyshed.com/
• Phonics play https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk
• Reading eggs (all children have a log-in) https://readingeggs.co.uk/
• Jackanory http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007t9w
• Storyline http://www.storylineonline.net/