Parent Home Reading Information Booklet
South Padbury Primary School has created a parent home reading information booklet to support parents with home reading to improve their child’s reading fluency and comprehension. The booklet contains tips for home reading, choosing just the right book, benefits of home reading, what to do when your child doesn’t know a word, and lots of great literature titles.
Frequently Asked Home Reading Questions
Do we have to do home reading every night?
Yes. We recommend students to read every night or at least every school night. A parent reading to their children is invaluable.
How long should my child read for?
We recommend at least 15 minutes per night.
My child doesn’t like home reading.
Try to make it a really positive experience. Your child will smile and enjoy reading when you praise them for their efforts (and mistakes). Children seeing their parents regularly read and enjoy books will also help with their attitude to reading.
We forgot the home reader today!
That’s OK. Just read it again the following night and bring it back to school.
We have already read this home reader.
Reading it again is always recommended. During early reading experiences books should be read at least three times.
The home reader is too easy.
That’s great! Home readers are meant to be easy! Improving fluency demands that the text/book is at the reader’s independent level, meaning the child can read the book aloud with at least 90% accuracy. This is why home readers often appear ‘easy’ for students, as their purpose is to build speed and accuracy. Some parents want ‘harder books’ because their child can already read those being sent home. Yet books at a child’s proficiency level provide children with opportunities to develop appropriate expression, practise reading skills and phonics and improve sight word knowledge and vocabulary, while most importantly building confidence and belief in themselves as readers.
What if the home reader is too hard?
There could be a few reasons:
- This particular level book may be challenging
- They may have been given the wrong level accidently – please let your child’s teacher know
- Your child may be tired or it could be too early or late in the day to read the book.
I feel my child is ready to be moved up to the next level.
The teacher has made that selection for your child based on phonic knowledge and/or reading fluency levels and students will move up when the teacher assesses them and deems them to have banked the phonic knowledge needed to move up a level. Phonic books are selected to support the school’s synthetic phonics program, and the phonics being taught in the classroom at that time. It is important that children move through the sequential letter sound program and can bank in long term memory the previous phonic knowledge before moving to the next sound.
Home Reading Continuum
South Padbury Primary School has created a home reading continuum that gives parents a summary of what home reading looks like throughout the primary school years.
