In Reception we start the day with our register and we discuss our daily plan via our visual timetable, weather, date and events.
The rest of the morning is focussed on either English, Maths or Wellbeing and has an adult led element followed by free flow access to both indoor and outdoor provision to allow our children to practise their skills.
Just before, or just after lunch, we have our phonics session. This is based on the No Nonsense Phonics program.
We all have dinner together and then play outdoors as a combined unit.
In the afternoon, we have a healthy snack all together to provide opportunities to communally eat and practice our communication and language skills.
There is adult input relating to our overarching Key Questions and then children are given access to our indoor and outdoor provision with challenges inbuilt to stretch their knowledge, pique their interest and promote collaboration.
During the week we have PE, Computing, music and Dough Disco lessons as well. Additional 1:1 reading practice is built into the longer provision sessions.
At Beckstone we ask for all children to take part in reading activities for 20 minutes a night. Each child is given 2 books, an ‘Our Together Time Book’ and a ‘My reading Book’. Each have a different purpose to support your child’s development as a reader.
We would recommend that the ‘Together Time’ book makes up 15 of this portion. The remaining 5 minutes should be used for ‘My Reading Book’ which is designed to develop your child’s decoding and blending skills.
‘Our Together Time Book’ is designed to help children harbour a love for books. There are many stories and facts to learn and share. By allowing them to select their own, the children have more control and therefore can have access to a wide range of texts shared with their families and read together. This should make up 15 minutes of your child’s reading activity per day. The purpose of this book is to develop a deep love of stories and is to be shared entirely with their family. Please read it together as many times as you like and enjoy talking about what you have loved and what you have learned. This shared reading helps give children access to a wide range of vocabulary and also introduce them to story structures. Being read to allows children to experience the musicality of our language and helps give them practice at separating this reading melody into individual notes of sound that they will begin to learn as letters as they progress in their development.
‘My Reading Book’ is quite different. This is designed to explicitly allow your child to practise decoding (what each letter is code for) and blending (putting codes back together to read words) the codes that they have learnt in phonics. It is HOW someone reads and it very important to practise these skills daily. Children need to hit an accuracy rate of 95% when reading to feel like they have succeeded. Too many unknowns and a child’s cognitive load is too high. We aim to strike that balance as accurately as we can by setting books/sheets with words that are matched to the phonetic codes learnt and practised in school. But to get this right we need your feedback.
I know this is very difficult but, unless otherwise instructed, please DO NOT help your child with their decoding or blending in their ‘My Reading Book’. As this is matched, they should be able to have a really good go on their own. Instead listen to them and encourage them and note down how they find it in their reading record. These are changed once a week and should be a repeated exercise every day. ‘My Reading Book’ should take no longer than 5 minutes a day. Even if they do not complete their book/laminated sheet in this time, don’t panic and just stop and pick up the next day. As children feel more confident through more practise we hope they will increase in speed and stamina over time.
I know this is a great deal of information but do not hesitate to ring the school if you need more clarification or help. We are always more than happy to do this.
We are beginning the most wonderful reading journey that lasts a lifetime, let’s make it as brilliant as we can together.🙂
