Early Literacy Workshop
Early Reading
Before your child is able to read
they need to have learned how to do
these three things –
Learn the sounds that letters make
Be able to orally blend and segment
the sounds in words
Learn some ‘tricky words’
Phonics
Phonemes are the sounds letters or groups of
letters make in words
cat
sh o p
Your child will get 4 sound cards a week to take
home until Christmas and each sound has an action
If you notice your child if having any difficulties
hearing or saying any of these sounds clearly and
correctly please let us know
Oral blending and segmenting
Blending is the ability to put the sounds in a
word together e.g. d o g is dog
Segmenting is hearing the word e.g. dog and
being able to break it up into the individual
sounds d o g
Blending helps your child learn to read and
segmenting helps your child learn to spell so
it is very important that your child is able to
do both of these confidently.
Tricky Words
Some words cannot be sounded out using phonics at
this stage e.g. the or to
We call these tricky words
At the end of each half term your child will be
given some action word cards containing some of
these words.
These are to be practiced regularly so that your
child learns these words by sight, improving the
fluency and speed of their reading.
Reading Books
Once your child is able to do all of these three
things confidently they are ready to read.
Reading books go out after the first half term or
when your child shows they are ready.
We will assess your child just before the first
half term to see how many phonic sounds they
know and if they can blend and segment words.
This will tell us if your child is ready to start
reading books. We will let you know if your child
needs extra support in any of these areas.
Our Reading Books
Each reading level or book band has a colour
As book bands are large and the books in them quite
varied we have split these up further into bronze, silver
and gold within the colour
Bronze books are the easier books in that level and gold
are the hardest
The aim of this is also to help keep your child feeling
motivated to read as they can see their progress better
Reading Record
Once your child starts their first reading book you
will be given a reading record
This is to record your child’s progress at reading and to
write comments about how your child is doing
To start off with each time your child completes a
reading book they get a sticker in their reading record
Once they get 20 stickers they earn themselves a
bookmark
After that they will earn a sticker to go on their
bookmark each time they read a minimum of 4 books a
week, with every book over that earning them an
additional sticker
Reading Record
It is very important that your child reads
at least 4 times a week to make good
progress in their reading
Once your child has filled up their
bookmark they get to take it home to keep
We will also be giving out a weekly
certificate to the child/children who read
the most books each week
These ideas are to help your child to
become a motivated and confident reader
Any questions?
Thank You