St. Helen's Primary School

How to support your child's reading

At St. Helen's Primary School we believe that reading should be a fundamental part of childhood and a skill which should be developed to support lifelong learning.

Our aim is to develop and embed a strong, sustainable reading culture within the school community. Confident and competent readers will foster a love of reading through a rich and varied experience of texts.

Inspiring children to read is their fundamental right. It underpins all learning and secures a good trajectory for personal development and an understanding the world in which they live.

As a school, we promote reading for pleasure in a number of ways:

Story sacks in EYFS
‘Our Books’ in KS1 which children bring home to share with parents.
Each year group has at least one story time per day.
Each half term, adults from across the school share book recommendations with children.

Supporting your child with phonics at home

If your child is in Reception and Year 1, they will still be learning to decode words using phonics. We appreciate that this is very different to how you may have been taught to read as a child, and so have compiled a page of resources to show you how we do this. Please click on the link on our website titled 'Supporting Parents with Phonics and Reading'

Top Tips for Reading for Pleasure

Set aside a special time – just a few minutes a day is enough to create a reading habit.
Get caught reading yourself – show that reading for pleasure is not just for children.
Read to each other – if your child really doesn’t want to read on their own, then read together. You read a page, then they read a page. Or one of you could read any dialogue. Be brave and put on different voices.
Value the books they choose to read – all reading is valuable for a child’s development. Some of us prefer non-fiction; some of us prefer comics. One child might like superhero books; another might a book of football statistics.
Set a challenge – can they read ten books before they’re ten? Can they read a book from six different genres: a comic, an information book, a funny book, a sci-fi book, a classic and an instruction manual?
Reading buddies – reading to a younger sibling can boost your child’s self-confidence and communication skills.
Audiobooks – audiobooks allow children to experience a book above their own reading level. It also allows you to share a book together or make the most of those car journeys. Listening to a story over and over again can improve vocabulary and encourage deeper comprehension.
Stage and screen – use your child’s favourite films or games as a springboard into reading. Knowing the characters and storyline can be a helpful bridge into reading a longer story.

Recommended Texts

Please follow the links below to find some recommended texts for your child’s age group:

Useful Links

Please use the links below to find stories to read for pleasure online:

BBC Audio Stories Audio Stories – BBC Teach
Story Online Storyline Online – Home
World Stories in many languages WorldStories
Story Nory: Fairytales, classic authors, myths Storynory – Audio Stories for Kids
CBeebies Stories Story Time – Stories for kids – CBeebies – BBC
Oxford Reading Tree Free eBook library | Oxford Owl from Oxford University Press
Book Trust: Stories for children up to 7 Years Stories for kids online and fun games to play | BookTrust
Project Gutenberg: Stories for children over 7 Years Books in Children’s Literature (sorted by popularity) – Project Gutenberg