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Reading

 
 Development matters Look, listen and note Effective practice Planning and resourcing
Birth-11 Months
 
  • Listen to familiar sounds, words, or finger plays.
 
  • Responses that tell you a young baby is listening.
 
  • Use finger play, rhymes and familiar songs from home to support young babies' enjoyment.
 
  • Collect a range of board books, cloth books and stories to share with young babies.
8-20 Months
 
  • Respond to words and interactive rhymes, such as 'Clap Hands'.
 
  • How babies' responses develop as they learn to anticipate and join in with finger and word play.
 
  • Tell, as well as read, stories, looking at and interacting with young babies.
  • Let children handle books and draw their attention to pictures.
 
  • Discover from parents the copying games that their babies enjoy, and use these as the basis for your play.
16-26 Months
 
  • Show interest in stories, songs and rhymes.
 
  • Children's responses to picture books and stories you read with them.
 
  • Use different voices to tell stories and encourage young children to join in wherever possible.
 
  • Provide CDs and tapes of rhymes, stories, sounds and spoken words.
22-36 Months
 
  • Have some favourite stories, rhymes, songs, poems or jingles.
 
  • Children's favourite stories, rhymes, songs, poems or jingles.
 
  • Find opportunities to tell and read stories to children, using puppets, soft toys, or real objects as props.
 
  • Provide stories, pictures and puppets which allow children to experience and talk about how characters feel.
  • Provide dual language books to raise awareness of different scripts. Try to match dual language books to languages spoken by families in the setting. Remember not all languages have written forms and not all families are literate either in English, or in a different home language.
30-50 Months
 
  • Listen to and join in with stories and poems, one-to-one and also in small groups.
  • Begin to be aware of the way stories are structured.
  • Suggest how the story might end.
  • Show interest in illustrations and print in books and print in the environment.
  • Handle books carefully.
  • Know information can be relayed in the form of print.
  • Hold books the correct way up and turn pages.
  • Understand the concept of a word.
 
  • The stories and poems children choose and know how to follow. For example retelling a story, using words and phrases from a well-known story.
  • Children's familiarity with the way books work. For example, turning the pages and telling the story using the pictures and using phrases such as "Once upon a time".
  • Children's references to and understanding of how print works. For example, asking what a word says or what instructions mean.
  • Children's recognition of their names, or letters or words, in scripts other than English.
 
  • Encourage children to use the stories they hear in their play.
  • Discuss with children the characters in books being read. Encourage them to predict outcomes, to think of alternative endings and to compare plots and the feelings of characters with their own experiences.
  • Focus on meaningful print such as a child's name, words on a cereal packet or a book title, in order to discuss similarities and differences between symbols.
  • Help children to understand what a word is by using names and labels and by pointing out words in the environment and in books.
  • Read stories that children already know, pausing at intervals to encourage them to 'read' the next word.
 
  • Create an attractive book area where children and adults can enjoy books together.
  • Provide some simple poetry, song, fiction and non-fiction books. Include books containing photographs of the children that can be read by adults and that children can begin to 'read' by themselves.
  • Create an environment rich in print where children can learn about words, for example, using names and labels.
  • Introduce children to books and other materials that provide information or instructions. Carry out activities using instructions, such as reading a recipe to make a cake.
  • Ensure access to stories for all children by using a range of visual cues and story props.
  • Plan to include home language and bilingual story sessions by involving qualified bilingual adults, as well as enlisting the help of parents.
40-60+ Months
 
  • Enjoy an increasing range of books.
  • Know that information can be retrieved from books and computers.
  • Explore and experiment with sounds, words and texts.
  • Retell narratives in the correct sequence, drawing on language patterns of stories.
  • Read a range of familiar and common words and simple sentences independently.
  • Know that print carries meaning and, in English, is read from left to right and top to bottom.
  • Show an understanding of the elements of stories, such as main character, sequence of events and openings, and how information can be found in non-fiction texts to answer questions about where, who, why and how.
 
  • Children's book choices.
  • Children's understanding about how information is kept in different places and can be retrieved.
  • Children's understanding of the elements of stories, for example, Mehmet refers to the 'beginning' and 'end' of a story. He says, "I don't like that ending. I think he should've run away and been happy ever after".
  • How children use non-fiction books.
  • The favourite books, songs and rhymes children turn to, to be re-read and enjoyed.
  • The phonic skills children use in decoding text.
  • The strategies that children use to read.
  • The words that children recognise, such as their name and signs such as 'open'.
  • The confidence with which children use their developing phonic knowledge.
 
  • Create imaginary words to describe, for example, monsters or other strong characters in stories and poems.
  • Discuss and model ways of finding out information from non-fiction texts.
  • Explain to parents the importance of reading to children, ask about favourite books, and offer book loans.
  • Help children to identify the main events in a story and to enact stories, as the basis for further imaginative play.
  • Make story boxes with the children. Practitioners should maximise the opportunities that these reading activities present to reinforce and apply children's developing phonic knowledge and skills, particularly once they have started a programme of systematic phonic work which will enable them to recognise words and read them for meaning. For example, demonstrate using phonics as the prime approach to decode words while children can see the text, for example, using big books.
  • Encourage children to recall words they see frequently, such as 'welcome', their own and friends' names, 'open' and 'bus stop'.
  • Play word bingo to develop children's grapheme correspondence, so that they can rapidly decode words.
 
  • When practitioners judge that children are ready to begin a programme of systematic phonic work they should refer to the guidance on the EYFS CD-ROM which can be found in areas of Learning and Development: Communication, Language and Literacy: Early Reading. This will support practitioners working in the EYFS and beyond to start teaching the phonic knowledge and skills children need to be able to recognise words and read them with fluency by the end of KS1. Practitioners need to make principled professional judgements as to when individual children are ready to start such work. For most children this will be by the age of five.
  • Encourage children to add to their first-hand experience of the world through the use of books, other texts and information, and information and communication technology (ICT).
  • Provide story boards and props which encourage children to talk about the sequence of events and characters in a story.
  • Provide story sacks and boxes for use in the setting and at home.
  • Provide varied texts and encourage children to use their phonics knowledge to recognise words.
  • Provide some simple texts which children can decode to give them confidence and to practise their developing skills.
  • Provide picture books, books with flaps or hidden words, books with accompanying CDs or tapes, and story sacks.