Monday 4th October 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

Today your child has brought a book banded book home as well as a book from the book corner. The book banded book is selected so that your child can read comfortably with some level of challenge.

To support your child’s reading and fluency, please could you listen to them read each day. This could be just a page or two, or more. If your child struggles with an unfamiliar word, you could help them to sound the word out. Another way to support your child’s fluency is for you to model reading a page, and then your child reads it back to you.

Other tips:

• Keep sessions relaxed – find a comfortable place where you and your child can settle down;

•  Give lots of praise, progress may not always be fast – children do not always find the skill of reading easy to grasp;
•  Talk about the book before you begin to read – look at the front cover, and the pictures (if any) and ask your child to think about or even guess what the book may be about;
• Ask questions to check your child’s understanding e.g. What might happen next? Why did something happen?
•  Talk about the book afterwards – did your child enjoy it? Why? What was the best bit?
• If your child struggles over a particular word, try to find ways to help them remember it e.g. by looking at the ‘shape’ of the word, or by guessing the word from the meaning of the sentence.

Daily reading aloud has a huge impact upon fluency – any time you can spend hearing your child read will be a huge help. We will change the books weekly. Either you or your child could log their reading in their reading diary.

Thank you so much for your support – it is, as always, invaluable.

Yours sincerely

The Year 4 Team