Reading & Phonics
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During these strange and difficult times, we all need a place to escape to sometimes. Where better to escape than to the wonderful world of imagination that can be discovered within books!
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The suggestions below are things you can do alongside the weekly home-learning lessons and activities assigned to you by your teachers.
As you will have heard many times from your teachers, reading is one of the most important things we can do with our time, whether during the lockdown or under ordinary circumstances. Without regularly practising the skill of reading, learning in all subjects becomes difficult.
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Online reading
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When school closed in March, you all took at least one reading book with you. It may be that you have finished those books now and are looking for something new to get stuck into! If that's the case, then try Myon!
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This website has thousands of stories and non-fiction books for you to read. Every book on the site also has an audio track to accompany it, so if you are struggling with a word or sentence, you can click to hear it read to you. Remember though, it's important to spend time practising the skill of decoding the words for yourself, so try to avoid only ever listening to the texts being read aloud.
Myon also offers a dictionary feature so that you can type in any words you don't know the meaning of to help you make sense of the text and expand your vocabulary. Developing your vocabulary is one of the most important things you can do as a learner. Jotting down all of the new words (and their meanings) you come across as you read is a great thing to do. You could then begin trying to use those words in conversations or in the writing tasks set by your teachers.
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All of the texts on Myon are linked to Accelerated Reader so you can take quizzes on them when you’ve finished reading. The staff at Hob Green know how much you love completing quizzes in the ICT suite in the mornings and we are sure that you’re missing doing them. The good news is that with Myon, you can continue to do those quizzes!
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Remember you can also take quizzes on the books you took home from school using Accelerated Reader.
https://ukhosted91.renlearn.co.uk/6652507/default.aspx
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Reading at home
When we are in school, we read for different reasons. We read for fun, to learn new things and also to improve our reading skills. You can do all of those things at home too.
In schools in this country, reading is assessed across a series of content domains. This just means a collection of reading skills that you are expected to have gained by the end of each key stage. At Hob Green, we use VIPERS to help us to focus on these skills when we are reading.
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V = vocabulary
I = infer
P = predict
E = explain
R = retrieve
S = sequence/summarise
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When you are reading with an adult at home, they could ask you questions using VIPERS to help you to develop these important skills. The links below provide a range of 'question stems' for adults to use when hearing you read.
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Have fun reading at home!
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Phonics
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Systematic Synthetic phonics forms the bedrock of our teaching of early reading at Hob Green, where we follow the Letters and Sounds scheme. In addition to activities set by the teachers during the period of school closure, the following links provide plenty of ideas and resources for supporting your child with phonics at this time.
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Click here, to access free online Letters and Sounds phonics lessons!
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http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/
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https://uk.ixl.com/ela/phonics
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https://www.twinkl.co.uk/home-learning-hub (search: phonics)
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