Exciting news!!
Mrs Montgomery-Smith, Miss Maun and Mrs Gwilliam-Parkes will be judges in the UKLA book awards this year! They will be judging books for 3 to 6 year olds and sharing the nominees with the children. Watch this space to find out what the children think of the books and which books are shortlisted by the judges nationwide.
How can families support at home?
At school children are encouraged to develop a love of reading alongside developing the skill of reading – through decoding unfamiliar words and developing reading fluency. Children will come home with a book that matches their reading ability to enable them to practise the skills they are learning in their daily Read Write Inc lessons. The children should read these books at least three times to ensure that they are reading the book fluently and confidently before they change it for another text. Children will also have access to their class libraries where they can choose a book to bring home that can be read TO them by someone at home. This ensures that the children develop a love of reading and being read to, where they can enjoy books that are perhaps beyond their reading ability and be immersed in the fantastic language that these books provide. Please click on the parent booklets to see how reading is taught when your child starts at school and how this progresses as their reading skills develop.
Starting to read booklet for families;
Developing Reading Skills - Information for families;
For World Book Day, the children were inspired by local Cornish author Ben Rowswell who came to talk about being an author and getting is work published. He shared his book ‘An Alphabetical Adventure of Cornwall’ and did workshops with our Y1 children to set them on the path of writing their own Alphabetical Adventure of Redruth.
Reading for Pleasure
It is important to us that our children develop a lifelong love of reading. Each class has a dedicated daily class story time, where the children are read to by both teachers and teaching assistants. Teachers select books that will engage the children, support their interests and the learning that is taking place as well as encourage the children to experience a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Reading for Pleasure sessions feature in the daily timetables of all three year groups. This is a time when children can choose what to read, where to read and who to share their book with. The children enjoy the opportunity to explore new books and revisit favourites.
In addition, our Key Stage 1 classes have a timetabled daily shared reading session. In these sessions the children are immersed in a text each week and given the opportunity to acquire and decipher new language. They are also encouraged to develop their skills as a reader –comprehension, interpretation and fluency. By sharing a text together children of all abilities are able to enjoy, engage and talk, sharing their understanding and opinion with others in a safe and positive environment.
It is also important to us to build a reading community, involving families and making community links to support the children as they develop their love of reading for pleasure. Have a look at the photos in the gallery of our first ‘booknics’ where children came together to explore our new books from the Books for Topics website and talk about their favourites. Next time we hope to invite families to come along and share some of our favourites that we have read this year so far and some that will be new to us.