How parents and carers can support at home

Parents and Carers are important educators and essential in ensuring that their children learn to read. Finding the time in daily routines to listen to children reading can be challenging, but is very important. Some recommendations for the times to set aside for this daily job include:

• Just after the children have got home and had a snack before going off to play
• Before bed time – the child reads to the adult first and then has a chance to be read their bedtime story by the adult afterwards

It is essential that parents and carers listen to readers throughout primary school. It is as important to listen to children read aloud in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 as it is when they first start school.

We ask that parents and carers do ask questions of the children about what they have been reading and these should be on the following areas:

• Predicting
• Identifying the Main Point
• Making Connections with other books, stories or experiences
• Inferring
• Clarifying (ask questions about what has been read)