St Thomas' CE (VC) Junior School
Reading at St Thomas
Phonics and Reading
At St Thomas' we aim to create a love of reading through everything we do.
Reading at home is one of the best ways your child will become a better reader and writer. Reading for just 20 minutes a day has a massive impact on the amount of vocabulary a child knows.
Read Write Inc
We use the highly successful Read Write Inc. Phonics programme to ensure we teach our children, who are not yet out of the reading gate, to read. We teach the Read Write Inc. programmes with fidelity and passion – we know what it takes to make literacy pleasurable and rewarding for our children.
Your child will bring different sorts of books home from school. It helps if you know whether this is a book that your child can read on their own or whether this is a book that you should read to them. The teacher will have explained which is which. Please trust your child’s teacher to choose the book(s) that will help your child the most. Children will always be given the opportunity to choose their own book to bring home which they will have chosen from our school library or year group reading area.
As children are developing their reading, it is beneficial to read a book more than once.
Help your child to sound out the letters in words and then to ‘blend’ the sounds together to make a whole word. Try not to refer to the letters by their names. Help your child to focus on the sounds. You can hear how to say the sounds correctly by clicking on the link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkXcabDUg7Q
We know parents and carers are very busy people. But if you can find time to read to your child as much as possible, it helps him or her to learn about books and stories. They also learn new words and what they mean. Show that you are interested in reading yourself and talk about reading as a family.
We are part of the School Readers Partnership - to find out more, follow the link: https://www.schoolreaders.org/
