Learning to read
Helping your child to learn to read is not just about skills, it’s also about encouragement, understanding and boosting confidence. Ladybird’s full range of reading materials give lots of support to children who are just starting to connect the words they hear with writing on a page while also providing enough challenge to keep children interested as they make progress.
Click here to view the Learn to Read information sheet
Important stages in learning to read
Pre-reading
Phonics
Reading whole words
The role of reading schemes
How parents can help at home
Choosing a reading scheme
Ladybird reading materials
Ladybird reading materials
Key Words Reading Scheme
Read with Ladybird
Read It Yourself
Read It Yourself Non-Fiction
Phonics
Sounds and Pictures
Important reading words
Important stages in learning to read
Pre-reading
Memory is vital for good reading development. Learning to read depends on children remembering what they see and what they hear. Children need to remember how sounds match letters, and how whole words match their meaning. Enjoyable repetition is vital for words and sounds to be stored in the memory, while anxiety and pressure can make it much harder to remember what we’re learning. Games are great for developing memory:
- Ask your child to remember five things he saw on the way home from nursery.
- Make up a list, taking turns to add to it, e.g. I packed my bag and in it I put some pencils, a teddy, a spoon, some crackers…
- Play ‘spot the difference’ games that you find in comics and magazines.
Rhyme is very important for children when they are first learning to read. It also helps to develop spelling skills as children get older. Have fun with silly rhymes by asking your child to:
- Make a sentence using words that all begin with the same sound, e.g. Messy Maya mixed a muddle of mud. It doesn’t matter if your child uses sounds that are spelt differently, e.g. Naughty Nigel nibbled Nan’s knees.
You can help your child best by helping him to develop a positive attitude towards books and reading and by sharing happy experiences of stories and rhymes. You can also help your child to develop his memory, his ear for rhymes and the ability to match letters to their sounds. When you share a story together:
- Ask your child questions as you go along: What do you think will happen next? Will they find the hidden toy? What happened to the dog in that story?
- Ask your child to retell the story using the pictures to help.
- Sequencing: putting picture and events in the correct order
You can also help your child by:
- asking him to look out for what’s the same and what’s different
- pointing out sounds, particularly at the beginnings of words
- taking it in turns to think of words that rhyme with each other
- asking him to sing you a nursery rhyme when you are tired
- teaching letter names and letter sounds (a as in apple, b as in bus, e as in elephant)
Your child may also enjoy learning to read his own name and a few other words
Phonics
Phonics is the name we give the system of sounds and letters that make up our language. Over the period of time that children spend learning to read, they need to develop their understanding of knowledge by:
- matching sounds they hear to letters of the alphabet
- building words from alphabet sounds that they already know: m-u-m., c-a-t
- hearing sounds in the middle of simple words, e.g. cat sounds different from cot
- hearing sounds at the ends of words, e.g cap sounds different from cat
- blending two or more sounds together, e.g. str as in street, strange
Reading whole words
Some very common words cannot be made from alphabet sounds. Words such as ‘they’, ‘said’ and ‘was’ need to be recognised as whole words. These are usually taught to children through reading schemes which repeat the words a lot in a story which gives them meaning. Reading schemes are often supported by flash cards which help children to memorise and recall a word on sight, helping them to learn the spellings to use in their own writing.
The role of reading schemes and support readers
Schemes have a very important part to play in teaching children to read. Carefully planned first and early readers help children to recognise important words on sight (key words), and to understand the relationship between sounds, letters and words (phonics). Some schemes concentrate on developing phonics, others on key words – and some schemes combine phonics and key words. Good reading schemes also develop children’s confidence in reading, and are so lively and exciting that children want to read them - and go on reading!
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How parents can help at home
Ten minutes each day spent together enjoying a short story from a good reading scheme is a marvellous investment in children’s skills. Enjoyable, regular and short practice really does make perfect! Look for a scheme that’s especially written for home use and check with your child’s school if you’re worried.
Choosing a reading scheme and support reader series
Look for a scheme that:
- progresses in small steps
- has lots of repetition
- is colourful, fun to look at and has lots of child appeal!
- gives you the information you need to help your child
- contains funny stories and rhymes in simple language
- fits in with the way children are taught at school
- sounds as natural as possible
- is simple enough to give children a rapid, confidence-boosting feeling of success.
Ladybird Learning to Read Materials
Ladybird schemes are carefully planned by experts to fit in with the way children are taught to read at school.
Ladybird publishes two different reading schemes plus several support reader series. They are all appropriate for helping your child to read but cover different methods of doing so. But don’t worry the end result will be the same. Varying art styles and stories appeal to different children and their parents. Choose one that you think your child will like.
Key Words Reading Scheme
Successful with generations of children all over the world, the Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme featuring Peter and Jane is structured to ensure rapid reading confidence.
The ‘a’ books introduce new words. The ‘b’ books repeat these words for further practice. The ‘c’ books link reading with writing and phonics. Flash cards and a picture dictionary help to reinforce important reading vocabulary.
Read With Ladybird
Read With Ladybird is a structured, progressive reading programme designed to support teaching methods used in schools. The books each contain four or five short stories or rhymes, enabling you to choose whether to read a little bit at a time or the whole book. This enables children to develop their reading stamina gradually. Texts are varied: there are examples of non-fiction, original stories, rhymes, and myths. Books 1–8 are for beginner readers, books 9–16 enable children to practise earlier vocabulary and encounter different types of reading material, and books 17– 20 build reading stamina and develop independent reading.
Read It Yourself
Read It Yourself is a series of traditional tales, graded in a simple way that gives young children a successful start to reading. Four levels encourage children to develop essential reading skills.
Level 1 is for children who are ready to take their first steps in reading. Level 2 is for beginner readers who can read short, simple sentences with help. Level 3 is for children who are developing reading confidence and stamina, and who are ready to progress to longer stories. Level 4 is for children who are ready to read stories with a wider vocabulary. Each level is also available as a boxed set and as a book-plus-audio CD pack.
Read It Yourself Non-Fiction
This series of carefully graded non-fiction texts can be read alongside the fiction books to develop essential reading skills. Children learn exciting facts while also understanding early non-fiction book conventions.
Level 1 is for children who are ready to take their first steps in reading. Level 2 is for beginner readers who can read short, simple sentences with help.
Phonics
These story compilations make phonics fun! The lively stories and humorous illustrations encourage children to sound out and build up words. Rhyme and alliteration are used to emphasise over forty important sounds. A book-plus-CD packs, flash cards and an activity series enable children to see, hear and manipulate the sounds they learn. Two boxed sets enable you to collect the readers in a more economical format.
Sounds and Pictures
These simple picture-word books introduce older children to both the long and short sounds that vowels can make: a as in apple, apron, rainbow and cake.
Important reading words...
phonics:
this is our alphabetic system and how it works – the letters and the sounds they represent. Understanding this helps children build up words they don’t know.
look and say:
this method teaches children a sight vocabulary of complete words through repetition. Many important words have to be taught by repetition because they cannot be sounded out using phonics.
key words:
are the words most frequently used in the English language. 100 of these words make up half the total number of words found in children’s reading. These words are usually taught as look and say sight vocabulary.
mixed methods:
use a combination of phonics, key words and look and say methods. This combination helps to ensure that children develop many different strategies to help them to learn to read.