Home Reading
The aim of our school reading program is to begin to support students in their development of the knowledge, skills and strategies they need to become independent readers in the future.
Reading is important. Children learn about the importance of reading as they watch family members use reading and writing for everyday purposes including reading for pleasure, using a recipe, writing a birthday card or sharing a story with a child. Listening to your child read at home is also a good way of supporting your child’s reading. Staff regularly assess children’s reading proficiency and each child will be provided with readers that reflect the skills they need to develop. Students are tested regularly throughout the year and any inquiry regarding testing protocols can be made to your child’s teacher. As part of our whole-school literacy program reading resources are available.
A range of readers is available for home use through the Home Reading system.
- Each child has an envelope and a reading logbook.
- Books may be exchanged daily through your child’s classroom.
- Please record the date and the book title in the booklet and return this to the classroom for redistribution.
The aim of our home reading program is not for children to read more difficult books as quickly as possible, but rather to enjoy reading and to practise some of the skills and strategies they have learnt at school. Children may read a book more than once, in fact, it is recommended that a child read a book up to three times before moving on.
Some of the books that children bring home as home readers may appear fairly easy to read. In class, children will read similar texts to develop specific skills and reading strategies. Home reading is aimed at enjoyment and practise. Please read the texts more than once. Repeated reading has huge benefits.
To develop greater reading fluency children practise their:
- oral language as they speak about and listen to literature.
- phonological awareness as they hear sounds.
- phonics as they segment and blend letters and sounds in words.
- fluency as they learn to read texts accurately, with expression and attention to punctuation.
- vocabulary as they come across new words in a written context.
- comprehension as they develop their ability to understand what has been read and to make inferences from texts.
Classroom teachers provide learning experiences throughout each year level to develop these skills. According to the level of reading proficiencies that are displayed by a student and the skills students are developing the Home Reader resources are grouped by colour and phonics (decodability). Students may find some texts easier than others and some more challenging. A more detailed description of the skills that are being learned by your child will be available with their home reader pack.
LEVELLED READING TEXTS
The levelling of texts in our Home Reader resources is based on the NELSON PM Benchmarking program, the FIRST STEPS reading development continuum and The Australian Curriculum Achievement Standards and learning progressions. These texts provide experience with high frequency words, spelling patterns, word types, sentence structure, text types, punctuation and a variety of vocabulary.
DECODABLE READING TEXTS
A decodable text is a type of text used in beginning reading instruction. Decodable texts are sequenced to progressively incorporate words that are consistent with the letter–sound relationships that have been taught to students. These readers have been sequenced to support the grade level phonics expectations based on the Australian Curriculum.
If you have any questions or would like further information please do not hesitate to contact your child’s classroom teacher, Mrs Badcock or Mr Linhart.