The Importance of Reading 

Reading is essential to developing literacy and supporting students' access to the curriculum. One of the best ways to help your child at home is by encouraging them to read! We have put together some quick and easy tips that you could use at home to encourage your child to read more.

1. Read for 20 minutes a day with your child. Use our reading log to track their progress.                My Reading Diary

2. Join your local library.

3. Create opportunities for writing e.g. thank you letters after birthdays, or letters for relatives living far away.

4. Block out the time in the evening e.g. 3pm-4pm revision, 4pm-5pm homework, 5pm-6pm news and reading.

5. Watch shows with subtitles!

6. Head over to the National Literacy Trust website for more advice for all your children, even infants.

7. Identify your child’s hobbies and then build their reading books around that. E.g. if they are into football, buy them a biography about their favourite player.

8. Magazines are great at introducing reading to children who resist books.

9. Email your child’s teachers for recommendations on books and encourage your child to visit their school library.

10. Read more advice from curriculum online                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Reading for Pleasure and Knowledge

Reading can be one of the most fun, exciting, exhilarating, life-changing experiences your child can have however, it can also feel like a chore. Use these tips to motivate and encourage your child to read regularly.

Create a comfortable environment.

It might be a favourite armchair, underneath a duvet, lying on the floor, a massive stack of cushions – make your own little reading area that your child can escape to.

Music or no music?

Some people find music is a welcome background for reading: it helps their mind to focus. Others find it a big distraction.

Avoid distractions!

Music is one thing, but friends are another! Your child cannot concentrate on a book if they have friends chatting to them, phones beeping, the TV on in the background… Try to make your environment as distraction-free as possible, so your child can focus on reading.

Reading muscle training.

Just as you would train before running a race or playing in a match, your child needs to train to read a book. At first, they may find their attention wandering, but the more they practise, the easier and more pleasurable reading will become. Set a daily reading goal – 10 minutes reading or just six pages and build them up over time.

Open their minds.

Books can take your child to incredible places and describe/show amazing things that they would otherwise never experience. They can introduce your child to people who think just like they do, or who have interesting new ideas. Encourage your child to take a positive attitude to new books. Take an active interest by asking them to share with you what the book is about and what they have learned.

Be a good role model.

Children who see others reading are or more likely to read. Read aloud some funny or interesting parts of a book that you are reading.

Bilingual books

Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual. Your local library is a great resource for bilingual books.

Find out more: https://www.worldbookday.com/families/

Critical Thinking & Philosophy 

The following is a set of resources designed to enhance the critical thinking skills of your child in a short, fun and engaging way. Each slide is a 5 minute discussion task which you can use to engage your child in academic thinking beyond the classroom. These tasks will help improve your child’s vocabulary but will also allow you to see how well your child responds to an array of complex questions.

A key part of decolonisation of education is the idea that knowledge is power. Historically, British education has placed emphasis on facts and figures and the learning of processes. All useful skills. However, what is said to be missing from education is a fostering of critical thinking skills. Those higher level skills that push students to think outside the box or creatively with the information they are presented with. Critical thinking also encourages high quality structured talk which is one of the seven recommendations encouraged by the Education Endowment Foundation.

Philosophy and critical thinking is an amazing way to do this and is often something that is purely a feature of public schools. These resources are inspired from the Philosophy Man website and YouTube channel and feature a range of activities. Some are silly and eccentric and some are more serious and require your input to carefully control the conversation.

Critical Thinking Resource Pack

Supporting the Curriculum