Tips from a Reading Specialist: Supporting Your Child's Reading

To become proficient readers, children need to develop four key skills:

1) Phonemic Awareness: Understanding the sounds that make up spoken language.

2) Phonics Skills: Knowing the sounds that letters and letter combinations make.

3) Reading Accuracy and Fluency: The ability to read correctly and smoothly.

4) Reading Comprehension: Understanding and interpreting what is read.

As a parent, you can significantly impact your child’s early literacy skills by learning how these skills are taught, engaging with your child’s phonics programme and by creating a reading-friendly environment at home.

Understanding Phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching children how to read and write by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters. It teaches children to match different sounds to written letters or combinations of letters. Children then learn to blend these sounds together to decode unfamiliar or unknown words.

The English language has 26 letters but 42 unique sounds. This difference can initially seem complex, but phonics instruction simplifies the process by systematically teaching these sound-letter correspondences.

Good schools use systematic phonics programmes, such as Little Wandle, Read Write Inc., or Jolly Phonics. Typically, children receive 15-30 minutes of daily phonics instruction, with regular assessments to monitor progress and identify learning gaps early on.

Phonics instruction usually begins in the first year of school, starting in Reception class (ages 4-5) and continuing through to the end of Year 2 (ages 6-7).

The early stages of phonics and reading lay the foundation for your child’s lifelong learning journey, equipping them with the tools needed to decode unfamiliar words confidently.

The Phonics Journey: Year by Year

Reception Year (Ages 4-5)

In Reception, children are introduced to letter sounds, focusing on recognising the sound a word starts with, its pronunciation, and what the letter looks like. This stage builds speaking and listening skills needed for phonological awareness.

Children start with commonly used phonemes such as 's', 'a', 't', 'i', 'p', 'n', enabling them to read simple words like ‘tap’, ‘pat’ and ‘sat’.

By the end of Reception, children should be able to read vowel-consonant (VC) and consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words and spell them out. They also learn some high frequency 'tricky words' that don't follow phonetic rules, such as ‘the’, 'they', 'was' and ‘go’. They may also be writing short sentences using capital letters, full stops and finger spacing.

Year 1 (Ages 5-6)

In Year 1, children explore vowel digraphs (e.g. 'ch', 'sh', 'th') and trigraphs (e.g., 'dge', 'igh', 'tch') alongside early spelling rules. They learn about graphemes (different ways of spelling each sound) and alternative pronunciations (e.g., 'ow' in 'snow' vs. 'cow'). Split digraphs such as 'a-e' in 'name' are also taught.

Their reading becomes more fluent, they begin to solidify their comprehension skills and expand their vocabulary, enhancing their story-writing abilities.

Year 2 (Ages 6-7)

Children read with increasing fluency and can read hundreds of words. They now enjoy longer books and begin to develop a love of reading.

During Year 2, they learn spelling rules, grammar, sentence structure and punctuation. They also focus on modifying root words when adding suffixes, special endings, silent letters and different tenses. They start correcting their work and may begin using a dictionary.

Year 3 & Beyond

As children move from infants to juniors, most are secure in their phonics knowledge and early comprehension skills. They begin to explore a wider range of genres, improving fluency and accuracy. By age 11, most children are experienced readers and will have hopefully developed a lifelong love for reading.

Creating a Reading-Friendly Environment

Parents play a crucial role in their child's reading success. By engaging in fun, interactive activities at home, parents can reinforce learning and build healthy reading habits.

Be a reading role model: Show your child how much you value reading and writing by doing both in their presence. This demonstrates good habits and may also spark their interest in these activities.

Create reading rituals: Read together daily — get into a routine to ensure you find the right time for you and your child, around 15-20 minutes per day is plenty.

Ensure your home has a positive reading environment: This should be a special time between you and your child, not a challenge. At-home reading aims to build a love of reading and your child should be reading books at their level, not challenging texts. If the book is too complex, read it to them — listening to reading counts as reading!

Provide diverse reading materials: Share many different kinds of books and explore different genres. Ensure your child can access various reading materials that cater to their interests. This could include non-fiction, audiobooks, cookbooks, poetry and digital texts. Keep these materials in easily accessible places around your home, such as next to comfy chairs, on low shelves in their favourite hangouts, in pretend play areas and even in the car.

Engage in interactive activities: Read aloud together and take turns reading to each other to build fluency and comprehension. Try to choose books that interest your child and make it fun by using different voices to reflect the punctuation and character’s speech. Having your child re-read the same book helps build fluency and confidence. Retelling favourite stories is an excellent way to develop a child’s literacy skills and comprehension.

Reading Tips

Here are some tips to make reading enjoyable for early readers:

Before Reading:

• Talk about the title and make predictions together — what might happen in the story?
• Do a 'picture walk' and let your child tell the story using the pictures. Your child can use these picture clues to solve unknown words and build vocabulary.

During Reading:

• Early readers may want you to read the book first or read along together. Echo reading is when you read a little louder and faster as your child follows along.
• New readers should point at each word as they read. This helps students monitor their reading — is the word I’m reading matching the word I’m pointing at? Finger-pointing also improves directionality.
• If your child gets to a tricky word, prompt them to use a strategy such as sounding the word out, breaking the word into chunks, using a picture clue, looking at the syllables, skipping the word and coming back to it and trying a different vowel sound (long/short). Don’t say the word until your child attempts to solve it independently. If two strategies fail, calmly say the word and proceed.

Comprehension & Inference

Reading comprehension is the child’s ability to be able to read and understand a book. Good comprehension skills are important if a child is ultimately to be able to learn from reading, as well as enjoy it. To help improve comprehension skills, you might ask your child some of the following questions during or after reading a book. Encourage your child to express their thoughts and predictions, giving as much detail as possible.

It's also important to encourage making inferences during and after reading. This involves understanding information that isn't explicitly stated by the author but can be deduced from the text. Encouraging your child to make inferences helps develop critical thinking and deepens their comprehension. This skill allows them to 'read between the lines' and grasp the underlying meaning of the story. For example, “I think the gingerbread man may be feeling exhausted here, as he’s been running for a long time.”

Questions to Ask

Is the book fiction or non-fiction? What clues indicate this?

• What do you think the book is about based on the cover and blurb on the back?
• Where is the book set? (Time and place.)
• Who are the main characters?
• How do the characters feel at the beginning, middle and end?
• What were the main events and the problem in the story?
• How was the problem solved?
• What was your favourite part of the book?
• Does this book remind you of anything (your own life or another book)? (This is called making connections.)
• Non-fiction: Have you learned any new facts, or do you have any questions?

Build Word Consciousness

Common words that can be recognised quickly by a reader are known as high-frequency words. There are over 1,000 and examples include 'the', 'have', 'little', 'made' and 'time'.

Most of these words cannot be sounded out correctly, as they don’t follow the regular phonetic rules, thus the need to learn them. Automatically reading these words helps to increase a reader’s fluency and rate.

It is important to remember that drills are not the route to skilled reading ability. The best way to help kids develop their high-frequency word knowledge is by teaching them to notice words in context in books. Choose a few high-frequency words each week and write them onto flash cards and stick them up around your home. Good places to put them include the fridge, the bathroom or the car.

Other ideas for learning high-frequency words:

• Scavenger hunts — have your child hunt for the words within a book.
• Build words with magnetic letters, play dough or natural objects such as sticks or stones.
• Write words on the sand at the beach or with chalk on the pavement.
• Play word games like bingo, snap or memory.
• Use high-frequency word apps such as IXL.

Activities & Games

Incorporating phonics and reading activities or games into your child’s daily routine can significantly enhance their reading and literacy skills. There are so many ideas; get creative, and most of all, enjoy the time spent with your child!

These activities support phonics learning and foster a love for reading by making the process enjoyable and interactive for young learners:

• Matching games such as ‘I Spy with My Little Eye’ develop sound discrimination and listening skills, which are crucial for early phonics learning.
• Games like ‘Flip the Pancake’ encourage children to blend sounds in an enjoyable manner, which is excellent for blending and segmenting practice. Print out or draw and cut out pancakes, labeling each one with a letter. Children can use a spatula to flip over each pancake, saying the letter sounds as they flip.
• ‘Letter Swat’ (swat letter cards with a wooden spoon) and ‘Letter Pong’ (write letters onto ping pong balls that children can shoot into a cup or goal) combine physical activity with learning, making phonics practice exciting for high-energy children.
• Incorporate any movements or actions into learning letters or words. When children associate a movement with a concept, they retain that information better. Play a game like ‘Noisy Letter Jump,’ where you write out letters on the pavement and allow children to sound out the letters they jump on, reinforcing phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Build in some fun by saying the letters in different ways, such as slowly, whispering, or in a scary voice.
• Pixar short films are quick, silent, high-interest films that are great tools for building comprehension, such as making inferences or predicting, enhancing critical thinking, or thinking about cause and effect.
• Apps or sites like Epic or Vooks provide thousands of high-interest books, audiobooks, and short films.
• Phonics Bloom and Phonics Play are online platforms that offer interactive phonics games.
• Reading Buddies - Pair your child with a sibling, friend, or even a pet and have them read to their buddy. This can make reading more enjoyable and less intimidating.
• Family Reading Time - Dedicate a specific time each day where everyone in the family reads their own book. This models good reading habits and creates a routine.
• Interactive Writing - Write stories or sentences together, taking turns adding words or sentences.

Identifying Signs of Reading Difficulties

Identifying the signs of reading difficulties can be pivotal in providing the necessary support to help your child overcome these challenges. Early intervention is critical to helping children grow as readers and ensure they are equipped with the tools required for success. Some early signs include:

• Difficulty with rhyming or recognising words that start with the same sound.
• Resistance to reading aloud.
• Not knowing the sounds associated with the letters, skipping words, and frequently guessing at unknown words.
• Mixing up sounds or letters frequently.
• Low comprehension skills.

Parents must understand the significance of a strategic and loving approach to phonics and reading. The journey from mastering phonics fundamentals to cultivating a rich reading environment at home, infused with engaging activities and supportive strategies, paves the way for children to develop a deep-rooted love for reading.

Tutoring Companies

If you would like to get your child help with learning to read and write, contact one of the tutoring companies below: