Reading – Information for parents.
Firstly, a big thank you to parents who have spent time over the summer reading with your child / children and using the online resources shared before we finished in July. I hope you have found these useful and that the children have enjoyed reading a range of different texts.
I appreciate you may have faced difficulties in trying to engage or keep your child engaged with home learning throughout the summer but as we prepare to start a new school year, it is vital to remember the importance of reading and how reading is at the core of learning. Children can only make progress, in all areas of the curriculum, if they can read and access the work that is presented to them. The more reading your child does at home, the greater progress they will make.
We need all reading books to be returned to school on the first day back. This is so books can be stored for at least 72 hours before allocating books to the children in each class.
If you haven’t already returned your child’s home reading book, please do this no than Thursday 3rd September. Reading books are expensive and it has taken us a long time to build up such a variety of books to help promote pleasure for reading. Books not returned to school will result in a request being for £5 repayment as we’ll need to replace them in order to ensure we have enough books in school.
Reading at home - September 2020
Your child will be sent home with a book (aimed at their reading level) on a Monday, starting Monday 7th September. They can enjoy this book at home until they bring it back to the school on the Thursday. All books need to be returned by the Thursday so that they can be stored for 72 hours ahead of going to a different household the following Monday. If your child is in UKS2 and has a longer novel, they are fine to keep their book for a second week but this will need to communicated to the class teacher via Seesaw.We have put a system in place for reading that all children will be able to access from September. We appreciate that some children / parents prefer to have a hard copy of a book and others prefer the online platforms. Therefore, we are asking children to do both in order to facilitate the amount of reading that needs to take place during a weekly period, this continues to be at least three times a week.
We would also like children to access reading books online using Rising Stars. This website was shared before we finished for the summer so hopefully most children / parents will be familiar with how to navigate the website, to access the online resources.
We have signed up for higher access, which offers more variety of books to children in all year groups.
Type into Google search – Rising Stars Reading Planet login
Select the top link
Login details as follows: Username: k.parkinson@dukestreet-pri.lancs.sch.uk
Password: DukeStreet1
You don’t need Centre ID
Once you have signed in please select the icon necessary for your child, either Reading Planet for reception and KS1 or Reading Planet for KS2. You will then need to click on the menu icon which will list all the different levels, colour bands. You’ll know which colour band your child is on as there will be a sticker on the book you receive on a Monday. If you need further support or clarification with knowing which colours / levels to look at, please email class teachers and they can provide the necessary information. There are follow up comprehension activities and support guidance for teachers / parents available on this website too. Please complete the follow up activities as this will demonstrate what your child has understood about the text and will help to improve their inference skills. This is a key skill needed to show that your child can read between the lines and can justify / summaries their thoughts, taking evidence from the text to help illustrate this. The follow up comprehension tasks really do help to prepare children for termly assessments and end of year tests. This is how we monitor children’s progress with reading and children demonstrating their understanding of a text helps to inform teacher judgements when identifying if a child is below, at or above (known as greater depth) national expectations.
Once your child has spent time reading either the hard copy book of one from Rising Stars please log this (just as you would have done previously, in the home school diary) using Seesaw. In order to do this please do the following:
Login to Seesaw
click green icon ‘Add’
Click ‘add note’- type a brief summary e.g. completed the book and the follow up activity on Rising Stars. ‘Jessica’ enjoyed recalling the main events of the story and was able to describe the main setting in detail using lots of different adjectives.
Click on the tick to send your message to the class teacher.
This will then appear as a notification on the teacher’s Seesaw account.
We can then continue to monitor home reading, identifying who has / hasn’t read three times within the school week. Class teachers and teaching assistants will continue to track home reading on individual stamp cards (to be kept in classrooms) and class reading charts. We’ll continue to reward children when they reach certain milestones e.g. once read 15, 25, 45 and 60 times.
For the time being, we will not be sending home school reading diaries so it is vital that communication to teachers is done via Seesaw in order for us to have an accurate record of what reading has taken place at home.
Thank you for in anticipation for your support with home reading,
Miss Parkinson
Deputy Headteacher
