How can I help my child’s literacy levels?
It’s been proven time and time again that reading as much as possible each week will help children in all kinds of ways – but especially with their learning, self-confidence, vocabulary-building and wellbeing. With that in mind, we know that you’ll be seeking ways to support your child. So here are a few ways for you to support your child’s literacy development:
- It might sound strange, but add the subtitles to what you are watching at home – a subtle but effective way to help access to words and their spellings as well as the context for them. You can see the link here for the impact it can have.
- The National Literacy Trust has some ideas here about literacy and learning more broadly for 9-12 year olds.
- Find a text your child is interested in – for free! Usually, we are sceptical about free things, but it is possible to get access to free reading material at home via the website ‘Many Books’. Students will have to ‘sign up’ by using their school/personal email address but when they have done this then they are free to choose whatever they would like to read. There is a huge amount of choice and the books are split up into genres which include mystery and thriller, horror, autobiographies, children’s fiction, science fiction etc… Some of the GCSE English texts are on there too (‘Jekyll and Hyde’, ‘Macbeth’ and examples of ‘Unseen’ poetry) so students can have these resources too. Please find the link here.
- Be a role model – do more reading yourself, or even volunteer to read for someone who needs a reading friend: Adults | Reading Agency
- Explore how your child might gain more than improved literacy through programmes offered by The Reading Agency, including Reading Well wellbeing support: Young people | Reading Agency.
- Encourage your child to access the reading programme – Bedrock Learning – that school pays for as much as possible each week. This is an interactive reading programme which identifies vocabulary gaps for each child and then develops literacy in the longer term by asking students to use the vocabulary in various contexts, and to remember this vocabulary again sometime later after first learning it.
- Encourage your child to visit the reading room at school during morning reading each day. Here they can discuss genres preferences, be guided by a member of staff and loan a book of their choice.
- Encourage your child to visit your local library. This is a good place to quietly sit to read or to complete homework – 2 advantages for the price of 1! Links are here for Trafford libraries and Manchester Libraries.