Catching The Reading Bug!

In my opinion, the most important job a teacher has to do is teaching a child to read. It opens up the world in a way that nothing else does. If a child is unable to read and, just as importantly, comprehend what they have read, they are unable to fully understand any subject.

Very often, when pupils enter school, teachers are asked the question, “What can I do to help my child?” The first most important thing we need to do in school is to ensure that the child has a love of books and develops the skills needed to decode words. This is usually done following two main methods:

Look and say:

For this method, the teacher says the word and the child repeats it. The child learns the shape of the word and remembers that the word says book.

The word says book. What does it say?

This builds up the child’s understanding of individual letters – A, as in the word apple, for example. Then it teaches a process of how to put the letters together to make a word. Initially, the words are sound out individually. The child blends the first two letters together, then adds the next, and so on, until the child sounds out the whole word. Put them together, it makes the word. Usually, we use both of these methods when we read. However, some children will have a distinct preference to one of the methods.

At Creative we use:

• Silly sound Cards
• Nessy computer programme
• Board games to develop this phonic knowledge

Once a child can decode, they progress onto books that gradually increase in difficulty. Pupils would often be given a test that would allow teachers to report on a child’s reading age.

However, this usually measured the pupils’ ability to decode words and little else. It then progressed onto tests that also included some comprehension. Now, the Welsh Government National Tests have changed all of this. The reading test is based solely on comprehension skills. As a result, schools are having to develop more strategic ways of teaching reading comprehension.

Parents are often less confident in questioning pupils about the books they are reading and will typically ask for help. To aid parents, in Creative, we use the Bugs online reading scheme.

This allows pupils to read and answer set comprehension questions by clicking on the ‘Bug’. Before a session, our tutors check Bug answers to see how well the pupils have completed their comprehension questions at home or during their last tuition session. When the pupils have completed an appropriate number of books and answered a set amount of comprehension questions successfully, they are given a paper test, very much like the ones used in the National Tests.

Pupils are not given any help, and if the pupil answers a certain number of questions correctly, they will then move up a level.

This way of working is proving to be very successful in developing pupils comprehension skills and analysing questions answered incorrectly, thus allowing our teaching to be very specific in solving each pupil’s individual problems.