Dear Families,

Today, your child will be sent home with a class 'library book', which is an aspirational text that they have chosen to read for pleasure. This is an opportunity to share an enjoyment of reading together. These books will vary in difficulty, so your child may need support reading the text. Your child will have the opportunity to read and return this library book, and then swap it for a new one - just like a library! These books do not count towards the reading award and do not require logging in records, they are books simply to enjoy together! Follow this link to find out a little more regarding 'Reading For Pleasure' and why it is so important.
https://www.explorelearning.co.uk/blog/reading-for-pleasure-inspiring-children-to-read/

On Monday, your child will come home with another book; this is their 'home-reading book'. This has been carefully selected to match their current phonological and grapheme awareness, with most children using our new Rhino Readers reading scheme. We love these new books as they are engaging, fun and reflect life in modern Britain - we hope you enjoy them too. You can find out more information here - https://www.twinkl.co.uk/reading-scheme

As part of developing mastery of phonics, research supports the need to read and re-read texts. Therefore, children will be expected to read their home-reading book once to decode, then once again for fluency and comprehension. This applies to all children who are reading books labelled as 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4a, 4b, 4c, 5a, 5b, 5c. This means that they may read it once on a Monday evening for decoding, then once again on Tuesday night for fluency and comprehension. They would then bring in their book to change on Wednesday. This means they could be reading less books over the year, but ensuring they are having quality experience with the text and reinforcing their phonics acquisition.

To ensure that we still encourage a love of reading and all children have the opportunity to earn their reading award badges, we have updated our reading reward scheme to reflect these changes. Your child can earn a point towards their reading award, by simply reading on that day. Therefore, if a child reads every day of the week, then they are able to earn 7 points towards their reading award. We want to reward the commitment to reading and not necessarily the number of books completed.

All other books, either labelled 6a, 6b, 6c and White, Lime, Grey, Dark Blue and Ruby, will only need to be read once. Similarly, as these are longer texts, every day your child reads, this counts towards the reading reward scheme. If they read on 5 days during the week, they can earn 5 points towards their reading reward.

We will be hosting a phonics and reading workshop later in the Autumn Term, which will help us discuss, share and explain a little more behind the importance of reading and the approach we have adopted as a school.

Please contact Mr Shillabeer or Mrs Hall should you wish to discuss this further.