Reading Time

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”- Dr Seuss

If there is any one gift that I could give a child,  it would be to embed in them a passion for books. There is so much more involved in teaching children to read than just decoding symbols on a page to read a word. Reading should ultimately be about enjoyment and/or requiring of new information. 

In order for a child to maintain and develop their reading level they should be read to at least four times a day. Hopefully they will have a least one of those books read to them at home, so that means that you should be reading to them at least three times during the day.

Now, I don't need to be reminded that I sometimes go days and realise that we haven't read the children a story... but it is too important to be relaxed about it. We need to read to them and regularly. However, when reading we don't always need to stop at every second sentence and ask questions or to spot the letters x, y and z. 

It is important to read purely for enjoyment's sake and two of our three books a day could be read cover to cover without stopping to discuss it. Simply enjoying the story and allowing the children time to absorb the added detail in the illustrations. ​The best way to make sure you can justify lots of reading (as if you need to!) would be to make sure you have a nice selection of topical book. That way whatever you read will also be re-enforcing the current topical language and adding to their knowledge and vocabulary bank. To support the learning of new vocabulary especially for EAL children you should point to the picture reinforce the meaning of the difficult or unfamiliar words.

Throughout the day we organically read to the children regularly, weather it is reading the days of the weeks, months of the year as we point to flashcards on the wall, or reading the instruction at the top of a workbook page. If you think about it you probably read more than you would think. You should read from a range of books and reading materials, not just fictional stories. Here is a list of different reading materials.

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Fairy Tales
Big Books
Poetry/rhymes
Comics
Manuals/instruction leaflets
Magizines (home, sports,food etc)
Encyclopedias
​Newspaper 
Online Children's Newspaper
Posters
Travel brochures
Scripts (great for encouraging language use during aistear)
And very importantly... Books they have written themselves!​​

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Enjoy and thanks for reading,

​Zara