Dear Parents
Here at Victoria reading is prioritised as an essential learning tool and we endeavour to keep finding new and stimulating ways to encourage our children to practise and improve. Following our homework survey, parental views indicate that the basics of reading, spelling and number work should be our focus too.
It is vital that children read for 10 minutes each day in order to develop fluency, have quicker word recognition, increase their vocabulary base and enhance their comprehension skills.
For these reasons, we are pleased to continue with our new initiative ‘Strive for 5’. Every week, the children will try to read five times to an adult for 10 minutes, and have their diary signed each time. When they manage to do this, then they achieve their weekly ‘Strive for 5’ and get a ticket. This ticket will be put into a special prize box and at the end of each week, one of the tickets is drawn and that child wins a new book.
At the end of each term, all the children’s tickets are put into a draw for a mega prize. The children will be able to choose their own mega prize. Last term, the mega prize was chosen by our winner and was an iPad!
Please support and encourage your child with their reading. Listen to them read each evening for 10 minutes, question them about their book and ask them to tell you what they enjoyed most. If your child enjoys reading independently then please ask them to explain to you what they have been reading, be interested in their choices and actively encourage them to keep reading. Remember that your child can read all sorts of texts; their school books, library books, magazine and newspaper articles, game instructions and that just names a few! Be inventive. So long as they are challenged with 3-5 tricky words across a couple of pages then it is the correct level text for them.
Thank you for your continuing support, and good luck!
Mrs Birchall
English Co-ordinator