Most of us won’t remember the process of learning to read, but we will remember inching our way through the levelled readers we brought home from school to read to our Mums, with their baffling stories of snowy Christmasses, tobogganing, lots of tea drinking and pink iced cakes.
With schools remaining closed until mid February at the earliest, and likely to close whenever COVID numbers go up again, many children will probably spend a large part of this year out of school and so will not have access to their school’s reading scheme.
Why are reading schemes used in schools?
There is a lot of science that goes into developing reading schemes. The best ones are developed to allow for easy practise of the essential components of reading. Learning to read is not a natural process, and children need to be taught and practise phonics, phonemic awareness, “sight” words, vocabulary and comprehension.
But the good thing for children away from their schools is that all books will provide opportunities to practise their reading skills, and reading schemes should not be used as the only books available for children. Whilst things have come a long way since Janet and John, and South African children will surely be more interested in the adventures of Lelo and Zazi (Aweh! From Oxford University Press), the stories might not be motivating and interesting to all children. They should be given a wide range of reading material and choose what they enjoy.
We have had a look at what is available to help teach your child to read at home:
- There is a wonderful selection of children’s books to be borrowed from Gauteng Provincial Library on-line.
- Collins have made over 300 levelled ebooks and worksheets available for free. If you go to www.collins.co.uk you will find instructions on how to log in as a parent to access the content.
- And aimed to increase young readers’ access to ebooks and audiobooks, the English Oak National Academy is providing a book a week from it’s author of the week. They also have lots of excellent, free video lessons that you might like to try.
For teaching phonics we found some good free resources:
- Feed the Monster, a free game from Curious Learning will help little ones to learn their letter sounds. This game is available in English and several other South African languages.
- www.schoolroom.com has a good interactive activity to learn the phonemes. Fantastic Phonics have released a free digital edition for children during COVID times.
- If you’re looking for great free printable phonic books, games and ideas for helping your child to read at home, go to www.themeasuredmom.com
Happy reading!
Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash
