A message from the Head of Primary School
Dear Parents and Carers
With the start of the year behind us and books and readers now coming home, I would like to emphasise the link between reading comprehension, what is understood form reading a text, and its relationship to knowledge about the subject being read. It is not as technical as it sounds!
When we think about helping our children become strong readers, phonics and sounding out words often come to mind first. While these are essential skills that we importantly focus on, reading is about more than just decoding letters and sounds. To really understand what they read, children need a foundation of knowledge about the world around them and it helps enormously if they have a broad general knowledge base to draw upon.
Reading a passage on a topic that children know little about, a scientific article full of unfamiliar terms for example, can be challenging for the students to comprehend. Even if they can sound out every word, making sense of the information will be difficult. Now if they have some understanding of the topic beforehand, it makes much more sense and their level of understanding is much greater.
It is for this reason why reading comprehension improves when we build general knowledge in subjects like science, history, and literacy. When they already know something about a topic, they can understand, connect, and think critically about what they read.
At home and in the holidays, there are many ways in which parents can help build their children's vocabulary and general knowledge.
- Read Aloud Together – Expose them to rich, complex books that introduce new ideas and vocabulary. Explain words and ideas that they don't understand.
- Explore Perth – We live in a great city. There are a number of museums, galleries, walks and areas that the students will find really interesting and provide a learning opportunity.
- Encourage Curiosity – Answer their “why” and “how” questions and explore topics of interest through books and videos.
- Discuss What They Learn – Having conversations about their school lessons or books helps reinforce understanding. We always talk about the school day so guide this discussion to their HASS or Science topic and explore it together.
- Use the Car and Travel Time – this time spent talking to children is invaluable. It is an opportunity to pass on your knowledge and you can be prompted by everything you see out the window or what is happening in your family's life. Children may want an electronic device for the journey but it is much more beneficial to talk about a topic and build general knowledge.
At St Mark's we want our students to be strong readers who can not only sound out words but can make sense of what they read. By helping your child build knowledge about the world, you are giving them the tools they need to grow into confident, thoughtful readers.
Kind regards
Mark Douglas
Head of Primary