Pre-school Reading Page

We love Reading!

Books are a really important part of our day in pre-school. We have a wonderful library, stocked with fiction and non-fiction books, and learn that we can use books for pleasure as well as for information. Whenever we have a spare moment we are encouraged to reach for a book and share our experience with our friends. This might be by recreating the story in our role play area, or using puppets to retell from the perspective of different characters.

Storytime, when An adult reads and shares a book with the children, is a favourite, and something that happens several times across the day, as well as impromptu sessions in the book corner, initiated by the children.

We have regular sessions where we invite our parents or other special adults to come in and read with us. This is an amazing time which we really look forward to…and so do the adults! We also invite other classes to come and read to us. It’s a lovely experience to hear other children read to us. We are always in awe of the older children because we know that is what we are going to become in a couple of years.

And finally…we use a ‘book as a hook’ to inspire our learning across the Early Years curriculum, planning learning opportunities linked to the themes. We choose our ‘book as a hook’ texts by following the interests of the children.

Mrs Sanders loves reading; especially anything by Roald Dahl.

I have always enjoyed reading. My family were always reading. We had Friday night weekly trips to the library, which was so exciting because I could get many books; I often couldn’t carry the pile I had chosen. That night I was always allowed to stay up a little later to read. My parents would also take me to the local bookshop so I could spend my pocket money. There was something so exciting to be the first person to open and read that book. I felt as if the stories were written especially for me.

My favourite books as a child were magical stories that would whisk me away to a magical lands. I especially loved the magic of The Far Away Tree. I remember my parents taking turns to read me The Jungle Book and being enthralled in this wonderful world of animals. I have always loved poems too, which gave me a love of anything by Dr Seuss, which I have read many times to my own children.

I have had many favourite authors whist growing up, but the ones that have stuck with me include C.S. Lewis who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia; E.B. White who wrote Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little; and E. Nesbit who wrote The Five Children and It.

I love collecting children’s books and have filled two book cases! My children are much older now but I love bringing in my books to read to my class. Julia Donaldson and Roald Dahl are definite favourites…but I still always get excited by reading anything by Dr Seuss.

Now that I am all grown up, I still love to read. I must have been good last year because Father Christmas bought me a Kindle. I love being able to take my virtual book anywhere to sneak a few pages in. I am currently reading Harlan Coben’s The Boy from the Woods.

Book as a Hook

We use a “book as a hook” to support our literacy lessons. This means that our writing is inspired by, and linked to, a specific book. We have enjoyed many “books as a hook”. Here is a selection of some we have enjoyed so far:

Supertato by Sue Hendra and Paul Linnet.

This book inspired us to create our own superheroes. We looked at character descriptions of Supertato and his evil nemesis Evil Pea. We looked at other superheroes and wondered what our super power would be.

Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper

Pumpkin Soup is a wonderful tale that reminds us how to be a good friend. We enjoyed looking at the autumnal colours and studied pumpkins in our art lessons. We drew still life pumpkins, describing the colours and textures of their skins, then looked inside and wrote instructions on how to make soup. We talked about how we could be great friends as we shared our home made soup.

Whatever Next! by Jill Murphy

As we looked at bonfire night we read Whatever Next! A story about a bear who, in his imagination, flew to the moon in a homemade rocket. We learned how to make our own rockets, writing instructions, and writing lists of what we would take with us on our journey to the moon.

Rama and Sita: The story of Diwali

We discovered all about Diwali using this colourful book. We rewrote the story in our own words, saying who our favourite character was and why. We explored colour and learned how to mix colours togother.

Kipper’s Birthday by Mick Inkpen

We enjoyed birthday fun with Kipper in his birthday book. We explored different celebrations and rewrote his story. We thought about how stories are made up with a beginning, middle and end. We wrote invitations and lists for a party!

The Monster Machine by Nicola L. Robinson

We explored all things monsters using The Monster Machine. We described at the setting of the book; wrote lists of what we needed to make a monster and described what our own monsters would look like.

That’s not my Monster by Fiona Watt

There are many That’s not my…books an we looked at a selection of them, understanding the features of these books. We read That’s not my Monster which inspired us to write our own book. We create our own monsters and used our character descriptions in our books.

We also love to use non fiction books to aid our curiosity and learning. In our role play we can often be found other reading material such as magazines, brochures, recipe books and maps.

We also love to use our class bibles and bible story books as our hook and inspiration. We just can’t stop reading!!!

Early Years Reading Curriculum

It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading.

Language comprehension (necessary for both reading and writing) starts from birth.

It only develops when adults talk with children about the world around them and the books (stories and non-fiction) they read with them, and enjoy rhymes, poems and songs together.

Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.

Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech, before writing).

At Hopscotch, reading is a key part of every day: adults reading to the children, the children sharing books with each other in the book corner, acting out stories, retelling stories using puppets, and using books to find out more about particular topics of interest.

Developing children’s expressive and receptive vocabularies are vital and speaking and listening are core elements of all activities. Children’s understanding of core concepts is explicitly taught using Concept Cat.