How to Support Your Child at Home 
Top Tips for Reading with Your Child at Home
- What is happening? Talk about what is happening in the picture before you read the text.
- Discuss the meaning of words. Use a dictionary to get your child used to exploring words for themselves.
- Discuss alternative words. For example, 'big'. Ask your child to think of another word that means the same, use a thesaurus to help you.
- Make predictions. What do you think will happen next and why?
- Discuss feelings. How do you think the characters are feeling and why?
- Where is the story set? Have your read another story with the same or similar setting?
- Discuss the problem in the story. What has happened? What went wrong?
- Discuss the resolution. How was the problem solved?
- Fact or Fiction? How do you know?
- What have you learnt?
- Encourage children to use expression when reading, especially for the voices of different characters.
- Discuss the punctuation on the page, for example, exclamation marks. What are these for and how should this part of the text be read?
- Focus on a couple of pages at a time and talk about the plot and characters in a lot of detail.
- Take it in turns so your child can hear you read.
