Supporting Schools and Parents

Reading

Below is a link to a video of a book being read three times. This can be shared so that parents can practice this at home with the matched books that the children use.

Each read moves through the stages of blending until fluency when the children can then add in expression and they can then understand what they have read.

• First read – the child is mainly going to decode a lot aloud, at this read they will not necessarily be able to understand the story as their brain power is going on identifying the sounds and blending them together to read words.
• Second read – the child is encouraged that if they need to decode (blend sounds together to make a word) then to do it in their head so they don’t keep decoding aloud.  this helps their reading fluency.
• Third read – the child can now read with more fluency as their brain power is not going on just decoding the words as they have had practice with that.

Discuss the characters and how they might say things.  This is when they read with fluency and also you can have a greater discussion around what they are reading.  For example from the video ‘How would you feel if you were trapped?’

Some children might even have to read it another time until they can read it fluently.  By reading and re-reading books we are able to shift the brain load from just decoding to fluency and understanding.  Children benefit from coming back to the same story over and over again.

Video: Book being read 3 times