Vipers

Use the VIPERS document to ask your child questions on their reading books, based on Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summarisation. We use these questions in class, too.

Our expectations for reading at home:

• Children should read to an adult for 10-15 minutes a day

• Please a daily record  of what your child has read and how they got on, in their reading record

How to go about listening to your child read:

• Ideally, sit to the right of your child as this helps them to gain directional control and scan text from left to right

• If the book is familiar, your child should be reading at a good pace with fluency and expression. You might say, ‘Make it sound like your favourite book/a story you would love to listen to’. It is very important, whilst children are learning to read for them to reread books that they know as this helps develop fluency, confidence and expression

• If your child has a favourite book that they can read fluently, they could read this instead to help them to ‘warm up’ before reading their new book

• For unfamiliar books: Start by having a look through the book Discuss the pictures Ask what might happen in the story? Identify any tricky words Have a go at reading the book

• If your child gets stuck: Can they use the pictures to help? Ask them what would make sense? Sound out the word e.g. c – a – t. Break the word into smaller parts – in / side. If the word is hard – tell them the word

• Don’t correct every mistake but do make sure that what they are reading makes sense • Use lots of praise to motivate your child

• If your child reads confidently with good pace and fluency, focus on developing comprehension skills

Library

Each class will have a weekly library session. The children are allowed to take two library books home per week (a fiction and a non-fiction is encouraged) as long as they have returned their previous book(s).