Reading in Four Plus

You can help your child to achieve their full potential by listening to them read daily (for around 10 - 15 minutes), reading regular bedtime stories and by encouraging them to enjoy reading and sharing books together. Reading widely through all of these approaches will help develop your child’s vocabulary, which in turn will make them more confident when reading more challenging books.

This means:

• practising Sound set 1 (which is the little green book)
• working through Word time words (check these out below)
• practising Red words
• reading the sound blending book or story book until they can confidently read it independently

We expect this to be recorded in their reading records. Please ensure that your child’s reading wallet is in their book bag every day.

Learning to read Green Words: Use Fred Talk – point with your finger under each phoneme (sound) as you make the sound, then run your finger under the whole word to blend those sounds together to say the word. Over time, as they get more confident, encourage children to use ‘Fred in your head’ so that they are saying the sounds in their head quickly then saying the word out loud. (At school, we use a puppet called Fred who is an expert on sounding out words! We call it, ‘Fred Talk’. E.g. m-o-p, c-a-t, m-a-n, sh-o-p, b-l-a-ck.)

What are Red words?

Red words are words that cannot be ‘sounded-out’ however, need to be learned by heart. They don’t fit into the usual spelling patterns. In order to read simple sentences, it is necessary for children to know some words that have unusual or untaught spellings. It should be noted that, when teaching these words, it is important to always start with sounds already known in the word, then focus on the 'tricky' part.

These are the Red words that we have been working on.

Autumn Term

Monthly news

Each month we will post pictures of some of the things that we have done throughout the month.

Spring Term

Monthly news

Each month we will post pictures of some of the things that we have done throughout the month.

This month we have been reading One Snowy Night (Nick Butterworth), Lost and Found (Oliver Jeffers) and Up and Down (Oliver Jeffers). We have completed fiction and fact books with a focus on Penguins.

We have also been learning about how other cultures celebrate New Year with our focus on the Chinese New Year.

You can access word time words and Red words on our class page to work through with your children. Please ensure that you spend time practising words and sounds as well as reading.

Monthly news

Each month we will post pictures of some of the things that we have done throughout the month.

This month our focus has been on Traditional stories. We have worked extensively on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, producing beautiful writing, map work and creative activities. The children has also learnt the song - 'When Goldilocks went to the house of the bears'.

Learning about Easter and why it is important to Christians has been our focus in our RE and Collective Worship times.

Please ensure that you spend time continuing to practise Word Time words as well as continuing to work on set 1 sounds and daily reading.

Summer Term

Monthly news

Welcome to our final term in Four Plus. This month our focus will be Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies. We will also be spending time on our focus Artist Vincent van Gogh. Some time has also been set aside to learn about the new king and his upcoming Coronation.

Class Admin

Practise reading at home with Oxford Owl

Help your child learn to read, and love to read, with our eBook library, containing over 100 free eBooks. Our eBooks have been developed for children aged 3–11, to teach them to read using phonics by following this link; https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/