Reading, Parents and Teachers

As teachers we are trained to encourage children to read, stretch children as readers and help them think more deeply about the text they are reading.

Many parents are unaware of the potential for stimulating a child’s imagination when reading and stretching their understanding of the text. This is where there has been a breakdown in communication. Listening to reading does not just involve listening! There are many other ways to help a child learn to read and learn to enjoy reading.

For a younger child

• If a child struggles with pronunciation – help sound the word out phonetically and then encourage them to blend it to find the word.



• Talk about what the word means.



• Stop a child if they miss out a word.

As they get older and more competent

• Keep reading to them and with them.



• Look at the front cover: What do you think it is going to be about?



• Look at the blurb on the back. Read it together.



• Who did the illustrations?



• Keep a book of your favourite words or similes, descriptive phrases.



• Encourage your child to pretend they are one of the characters from the book and question them about how they are feeling at key points in the story; This is called hotseating.



• Parents could dress up as one of the characters!

To encourage enjoyment in a competent reader

• Half way through the book can the children predict the ending?



• Play – 'Go Find' – for example, find words in the text that describe the character the best.



• Discuss new words once they have the sounds. What do they mean? Children can often read words perfectly, but when you ask them what it means they can't tell you.



• Create a comic strip to summarise a story.



• Write a playscript and act out the key part of the story.



• Draw a picture version of the story or a scene.



• Take note of punctuation when reading – it's fun to add sound effects for punctuation.



• Write an alternative ending together.

As you can see from the lists above, listening to a child read and reading to a child has huge potential. Unfortunately, this is often not communicated to the parents.

How to improve upon the teacher/parent relationship?

How can we improve this relationship? In many schools, numeracy evenings are held for parents to learn the new ways that the children are taught maths. In the same way, similar evenings could be held to help parents when helping their child to learn how to read.

An example, in terms of synthetic phonics could be to have a parents meeting for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. These meetings could be held at the beginning of the school year and revisited throughout. The meetings would involve the teacher modelling how to make pure sounds and to give parents an opportunity to try making these sounds themselves. Teachers could model how to break down words into simple and more complicated blends according to ability.

A parental booklet could be developed, with the parents' help, with a selection of questioning methods that could be used for home reading, as well as activities/games to help with phonic sounds and the formation of letters.

Authors: Ciara Trainor (Year 2 teacher, St. Bernadette Primary School, Bristol) & Ben Whitehead (Year 6 teacher, St. Michael's Primary School, Stoke Gifford, South Gloucestershire)

Reading with Synthetic Phonics | Back to School | Reading – How to Make it Fun | Why You Should Bother | What To Do if Your Child Has Reading Difficulties | Parents Rights and Responsibilities

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