Senior Infants: Literacy

 Suggestions to Reinforce Literacy Skills at Home

• Shared Reading Approach 

1. Engage in shared reading aloud (child/adult) at the child’s reading level.

2. The adult accentuates reading with expression and being mindful of his/her reading rate as well. 

Guidelines for Parents/Guardians:

1. Make sure the atmosphere is happy and relaxed.

2. Find a quiet place where there are no distractions.

3. Keep each reading session short (about 5-7 minutes).

4. Sit down together so that both child/parent can see the book.

5. Talk about the book and any illustrations first.

6. Ask your child to make predictions about the story based on the title and illustrations. 

7. Encourage your child to begin reading. 

8. If your child is trying to sound out an unknown word, give him/her time to do so. Many young readers may attempt a guess at a word based on its first letter, so encourage your child to sound out the whole word.

9. When your child misreads or is unsure of a word, provide the word to avoid the meaning of the story being lost. 

10. After reading, ask your child questions about the story and spend time together discussing what he/she liked/disliked about the book. 

11. Give lots of praise for effort.

• Rereading Familiar Books

1. Rereading familiar books provides opportunities for your child to develop their reading fluency, comprehension and the enjoyment of a variety of books. 

2. Encourage your child to reread familiar books aloud to younger/older siblings, or other extended family members (about 5 mins) 

3. Examples of questions which may be used to aid your child’s comprehension skills are as follows:

• Look at the picture on the front of the book. What do you think this story will be about?  

• Can you retell the story in your own words?

• Has anything like this ever happened to you?

• Which part of the story did you like best?

• Which character did you like best? Why did you like him / her?

• Were there any characters that you didn’t like? What did you not like about them?

• Can you think of some words to describe your favourite character? (Were they kind, happy, sad, selfish, funny, cross?)

• If you could ask your favourite character a question,  what would you ask?

• Do you know any other stories about …….(bears, giants, princesses, kings, foxes, wolves?)
  
  

• Challenging Books

1. The parent/guardian can also read more challenging books to the child. 

2. This provides opportunities to extend your child’s range of vocabulary and to further develop their listening skills.

• Summer Stars Reading Programme

1. Information on the Summer Stars reading programme for children can be found by following this link: https://www.librariesireland.ie/services/right-to-read/summer-stars