All parents know that it is crucial, yet often tricky, to get your child reading early. At Clarendon Tutors, we see over and over again the correlation between advanced early readers and exam success at 7+, 8+, 10+ and 11+.
Most schools now follow the Oxford reading tree, which should take your child from nursery to year 6.
These books start off wordless at level 1 (lilac) to familiarise your child with the concept of a book itself, before moving on to digraphs and phonics at levels 3, 4, 5 & 6.
The early years teachers we have on our books, suggested that your child should be doing the following before their teachers at school will elevate them up the reading tree:
- Reading with fluency and accuracy.
- Displaying advanced comprehension (able to answer who? what? why? questions comfortably).
- Reading the punctuation correctly.
Our top tips to get kids reading early:
- Daily reading time. Make sure, as far as possible, that scheduled accompanied reading time (with questions) is observed every single night at the same time. This should become routine and something that your child looks forward to.
- Read in front of your child. As all parents know, children model their behaviour on their parents, so if your child can see you reading, then they will want to do the same.
- Subtitles on their favourite shows. This is a bit of a cheat, but if they are going to watch Peppa Pig then you can turn the subtitles on, so that they will be subconsciously absorbing the words through reading.