Guidance for parents and carers
Please find here a useful selection of resources and videos for parents and carers on themes such as reading at home and phonics.
We hope you find the video tutorials useful but please let us know if there are additional topics you would like.
Reading and phonics
Bridge Farm Primary School has an unwavering ambition in that all of its pupils are taught to read at an age appropriate level. The school teaches a systematic, synthetic phonics scheme (Early Reading acquisition) using Read, Write, Inc. Phonics (RWI).
This is taught daily in Reception and KS1. Phonics continues to be taught for those children who need it, throughout Lower Key Stage Two. For children in Years 5 and 6, they will access the Fresh Start intervention programme, if they require support with their phonics and/or reading fluency. Furthermore, we also use RWI Spelling to teach spelling rules from Years 2-6, once children have progressed on from phonics.
Children are grouped homogeneously according to their progress and attainment. They are assessed termly, and teachers have an excellent grasp on how each child needs to move forward with their reading.
We will offer parent workshops throughout the year, so that you as parents can feel fully confident with supporting your child’s learning.
Key vocabulary used in lessons:
- Fred Talk – Fred the Frog can only speak in a segmented way, e.g. ch-i-p. This is a really important early reading skill, for children to be able to blend words into reading
- Red Words – these might be known as ‘Tricky Words’ in other schemes. They cannot be sounded out, for example ‘said’, ‘any’ and ‘who’
- Speedy Green Words – these are really common words, that we want the children to be able to read speedily, on sight
- Special Friends – these may also be known as ‘digraphs’ and ‘trigraphs’. Two or three letters, making one sound, for example ch, sh, th, air, ee
How can I help?
- Hear your child read aloud at least five times a week
- Ask them to ‘Fred Talk, read the word’ if they are struggling
- Ensure they re-read any sentence where they struggled over a word
- Recap the sounds on the sound mats in the front and back of their Reading Record. Praise your child for using the ‘pure sound’ (for example ‘b’ not ‘buh’)
- There are excellent Ruth Miskin training videos on YouTube
- Read aloud to your child; a range of other stories, poems, news articles, shopping lists etc.
- If your child is writing, encourage correct letter formation using these rhymes:
You can download and print out the rhymes for letter formation (Pdf)
Reading books
Children bring home a paper copy of whichever book they have been reading in their lessons that week. This means that they should feel super confident when reading it. Re-reading books is a vital part of the National Curriculum, and it allows children to develop fluency and comprehension with each read. Children will also work on their comprehension and ‘story telling voice’, in lessons.
To supplement this, your child will also bring home another book. This will be closely linked with the sounds they have been learning. This will be an unseen book, so might provide more challenge for them.
Once your child has ‘graduated’ from RWI Phonics (the national aim is for this to be by the end of Year 2), they will move to the coloured reading scheme.
Please ensure that your child reads a minimum of five times a week.
For more information on how to read at home with you child please see the Book Trust
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