Home Reading Support

At Melbourn Primary School, we believe it is important to work in partnership with parents to make sure every child in our school both learns and loves to read! In 2020-2021, 85% of our families read with their children 4 times a week. We will continue to work alongside our parents to improve this even further. 

Early Reading

At Melbourn, we teach our children using the 'Read Write Inc' phonics scheme. From starting school, you will find that your children have a reading record and a picture book in their book bag. Listening to stories is a really important way of helping your child to learn to read. Try to be really enthusiastic and ask the children questions about the story as you go through. 

Top tips to engage your children in stories: 

• Point out things you can see in the pictures
• Ask 'What can they smell? What can they hear?' etc
• Do silly voices! 
• Use facial expressions 
• Act surprised/scared/upset/happy about things that happen in the story

Phonics: 

After a couple of weeks, you should also receive a reading book which will be linked to the phonetic sounds that your child is learning. We use 'Read Write Inc' to teach phonics as well as sending home 'Read Write Inc' book bag books to ensure that the learning in school links to the learning at home. 

Some phonics book bag books may have just pictures to begin with; use these to help your children learn to tell a story. 

We run a phonics workshops every year to help new parents have a deeper understanding of what phonics is. Here is a recording of our phonic workship.

For further information about the RWInc scheme please follow the links below.

How do I do phonics with my child at home? 

Here are some videos of our teachers teaching phonics. When you read with you child at home, try to 'sound out' and 'blend' the words in the same way as we do in our videos.

Here are some useful resources to support your child with phonics at home.

How do I choose books for my child to read? 

At MPS, we have a set list of quality texts that we share with the children throughout their life at school. As a teaching team, we agreed on the criteria that makes a quality text for our children; 

• A range of quality authors
• Fiction and non-fiction
• Poetry with new vocabulary
• A range of topical issues in which children can relate to; race, religion, gender identity, war etc. 

These texts are read to our pupils on a daily basis. 

Once your child has progressed beyond our range of phonetical reading books, they will be able to choose chapter books from our school library. If you are looking for ideas of books to buy for your children, here are some useful lists!