Reading At Home
Below are just a few ideas to help provide a focus for children reading at home. This list is not exhaustive, nor is it intended that every single point is addressed.
We suggest that you choose one or two points to consider each time you read.
Depending on the book, it may be appropriate to use the same focus during each session e.g. you might want to concentrate on the actions of the main character throughout the book.
Most importantly, reading sessions should be relaxed and enjoyable and,
hopefully, develop and encourage a love of books.
To help with word recognition
- Re-read the sentence and try and understand what the missing word might mean
Use initial letter sounds
- Look for words within a word (e.g. rain in drainpipe)
Segment words into chunks
Fluency and grammatical awareness
- Take account of full stops and commas that mark pauses and grammatical boundaries
- Use appropriate intonation e.g. raising voice at questions
- Look at how speech is punctuated – use different voices for different
speakers
- When reading speech take account of how the speaker is speaking and use
appropriate voice e.g. crossly, shrieked etc
Look at use of pronouns in a paragraph and determine who or what is being
written about
Understanding how texts work
- Make a prediction about what will happen next – back up prediction with
evidence from the text that has already been read
- Use awareness of character and dialogue to read with expression
- Identify and discuss effect of adjectives within a sentence or paragraph. Are there others that could be used in addition to the ones chosen? Would this change the meaning? Which adjectives would alter the meaning?
- Identify and discuss effect of adverbs within a sentence or paragraph. Are there others that could be used in addition to the ones chosen? Would this change the meaning? Which adverbs would alter the meaning?
- Identify how much time has passed within a paragraph/page/chapter or story. How can you tell?
Interpretation, response and attitude
- Identify and discuss the main events or key points
- Describe how a character may be feeling or what they may be thinking at different points in the story
- Say why a character may have acted in a particular way. Back this up with examples from the text that they have already read.
- Generate some questions before reading the next part of the story. This could include questions to ask the main characters.
- Look at the effect of specific words and phrases e.g. to create humour,
images and atmosphere
- Identify the point of view from which a story is told. Re-tell some of the story from a different viewpoint e.g. the wolf in The Three Little Pigs
- Give opinion about what they have read