Reception home reading information!

Reception have been flying like eagles this half term in their monster phonics sessions. They are learning the alphabet sounds, developing their sounding out and blending skills to help them read simple words, and they are learning how to read tricky and high frequency words! 

 

This week we are sending the Reception children home with their reading diary and their first reading book. We do not currently have enough of each set of Monster Phonics Books for every child to take home so we are staggering the start on the Monster Phonics Books. If your child doesn’t bring a Monster Phonics book home this week they will bring a wordless book home to share with you instead. Use the wordless books to tell your own story and identify some initial sounds for the pictures throughout the book for example; if there is a dog in the book ask your child what sound does dog start with? Sharing the wordless books and identifying the initial sounds will continue to support your child’s reading development.

 

Please look after your monster phonics home reading books and bring them to school everyday. We will listen to your child read once a week and change reading books once a week. We will not have a set day for this. 

 

Your child should be starting to recognise and read the sounds in their Monster Phonics book. They are learning how to use their phonics sounds to sound out and blend the big words on each page in these books. You can help by pointing to each individual sound in each word and asking your child to sound out (say) each individual sound and blend (read the whole word) e.g t-a-p = tap! If your child needs support you can say the sounds in the word(sound out the word) for them, encourage your child to listen and blend (read) the whole word. 

 

There is also extra information on each page of the Monster Phonics books to help you discuss the book with your child. You can read the smaller text at the bottom of the page to your child. 

Here is a video showing you how we read the Monster Phonics books with your child. Watch Mrs Coleman-Harris read with a child in the video and see how we read together. Here is the link https://youtu.be/3RKeA4Bhcls 

Please aim to read the Monster Phonics book once a day with your child for around 5 to 10 minutes. Remember to practice reading your sounds on the flash cards and the tricky words on your mat too. Please record how your child did with a brief comment in their reading diary. If there are 5 comments recorded across the week your child will be entered into the ‘5 times reader challenge’ competition. They will receive a gold token to put into their house team token collector. The more tokens they earn the better! At the end of each half term the winning house with the most tokens will receive a prize! 

 

We will also continue to send home the sound cards we are learning in class for you to use at home. You can cut them out and use them as flashcards to recall the sounds and build words with them. 

 

If you would like to practice the sounds together here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRoFpvC0yn0

 

Education City, ICTgames.co.uk, phonicstracker.co.uk and phonicsplay.co.uk are also great for more phonics games that you can try at home together.

 

Please also see the phonics section on the school website for the parent login details to the Monster Phonics Website. This will give you access to the Monster Phonics resources. You can also create your own Monster phonics ebook account and have access to all of the Monster Phonics book online. Here is the link to the phonics section on the school website with the details https://st-marys-colton.staffs.sch.uk/our-school/curriculum/phonics

 

We will work together to get all of the reception children reading this year! Your support with your child’s reading is vital and it will really help to give them the best start in their reading journey. If you would like anymore help or have any questions please ask Mrs Coleman-Harris who will be happy to help.

 

Thank you!