The Primary English Language Acquisition (ELA) team recently had the opportunity to host a parent workshop focusing on reading at home and were delighted by the number of attendees and level of engagement in the workshop. Parents were able to experience various aspects of reading through the workshop activities and learned about the impact and benefits of reading for 20-30 minutes a day. 

Parents took part in three wonderful activities aimed at supporting their child’s reading at home. The ELA team went through Phonics: the understanding of how the sounds of a language relate to the letters of the alphabet. It is a critical skill for early readers and those new to English. Reading skills: the skills that children need to be able to read and understand a text. These skills include predicting, summarising and answering a variety of different questions. Finally, the team introduced parents to an app called Readtheory. Readtheory is a free online reading programme that can be used to help children of all ages improve their reading skills.

The workshop was a great success. Parents were engaged and enthusiastic about learning more about how to help their children read. We are confident that the information they learned will be beneficial to their children’s reading development and we look forward to another workshop in Term 2.

In addition to the information provided in the workshop, we would like to offer some additional tips for parents who want to help their children learn to read:

• Create a time for reading every day.
• Make reading fun and enjoyable.
• Talk to your child about what they are reading.
• Provide your child with a variety of reading materials.
• Encourage your child to read aloud.
• Model good reading behaviour for your child.