Looking back on Bryns first year at school one of the highlights for me was seeing his reading develop.
By the end of the year his reading was good enough to take part in the Summer Reading challenge at the library & read the 6 books all by himself, which he then enjoyed telling the staff at the library all about before collecting his smelly stickers & other goodies.
We’ve been very lucky in the sense that it feels as if Bryn is a natural reader. His love of books combined with his great memory seemed to have helped him master reading without too many difficulties.
He was given one reading book from school each week, not fantastic storybooks but the ones which helped him practice digraphs, ‘tricky words’ & some punctuation. Alongside this he picked books from the library, continued having stories read to him & would practice his reading with picture books.I remember one morning when he read us a Meg & Mog story all by himself, we were pretty amazed.
When reading picture books to Bryn he was always keen to pick out additional sound effects or text in speech bubbles to read to us.
The books he seemed to enjoy most from the school reading books were the non fiction ones. I was a happy librarian the day he asked me to explain the contents & index page. With the non fiction books he enjoyed the ability to take control & select the pages that interested him.
He galloped through whatever reading scheme they followed at school & the his proudest day was when he was allowed to move onto Turquoise level books.
Since then there has been no stopping him. He reads anything he sees in the street, is willing to have a go with most books ranging from picture books to chapter books & so far is really enjoying reading, long may it last.
What a complete star! LOVE it when you start to see that tiny spark turn into a flame, turn into a lifelong passion for reading and stories. C is just getting to the stage where she’s taking ownership of her reading too – Moving away from those dry staccato ‘phonics’ books and into the realm of stories.
She has just brought her first library book home from school (Pinocchio – pretty interesting choice) and that seems to have given her more impetus to learn to read so that she can take it off on her own and read without daddy.
It’s a happy time, also a bit of a sad time because I can see me needing to change the name of the blog to “Read It, C” soon 🙂
Lovely post and loved the choice of books in the Summer Reading Challenge too!
We are just starting out on our reading journey so this was a great post to read – inspiring to see how much progress can be made in a year and that those dull phonics books have a role to play alongside the more interesting library books she chooses and I buy for her