How to Help Your Child

As you may already your child usually gets a new decodable book to read 3 times per week.  The reason the children keep the same book for 2-3 days is so that they have a chance to re-read the story and build up their fluency and confidence.  All books have been matched to your child’s phonic knowledge therefore they will only contain words with sounds in that they have learnt at school.  Here are some ideas of how you can support your child with the first, second and even third read of their book.

Day 1

  • Children will be not be familiar with the story so you might want to talk about the title of the book and what the story might be about.
  • Read the Story Green Words and the Red Words in the inside cover of the book together and talk about the meaning if they are unsure.
  • Let the child read the book for the first time themselves, point to the words as they read, if they hesitate help them to sound out and the blend the word.
  • Re-read each page, so that children can understand what they have read, if they are focused on reading words they can find it hard to focus on the meaning of the story at the same time.
  • Re-read the story to your child once they have finished, this way they can copy you when they read it the second time.

Day 2

  • Ask your child to tell you what the story was about.  You could you use the retell the story section of the book on the last page.
  • Re-read the green and red words, this time ask them to try to read them without sounding out and tell them that if they see that word in the text then they should try to just read the word without sounding it out.
  • Let your child re-read the book, this time they should be able to read more words without sounding out and might even be able to add some expression.
  • Ask the Questions to chat about at the back of the book.  You will need to read the questions, but ask the children to find the answers within the book.

Day 3

  • If over the weekend your child has their book for 3 days you could ask them to read it one final time, maybe this time they could read it to another member of their family.  Use this as an opportunity for them to ‘show off’ their storytelling skills.