Mrs Burke and the other Reception staff were delighted to welcome nearly all parents / carers into the classroom this week to watch the Reception children learn phonics – so important in developing reading and writing skills.
Parents who visited either on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday gained an insight into the general teaching that goes on in Reception, but more specifically learnt about how we teach phonics and how they should support their child’s learning at home:
‘It was useful to see the step-by-step process in which the children are taught so that I can attempt to support in a similar fashion at home. It was helpful to hear the language used in context (grapheme, phoneme etc).’
‘Very informative and well-organised. Definitely helps with how to support at home.’
Lots of parents left impressed by the children’s learning behaviour:
‘I was happy to see how well the children are engaged.’
Finally, we asked how we can make these sessions even better. We had a couple of suggestions – a longer session was suggested, and the session a little bit earlier in the year. We’ll consider these, although in previous years we’ve tried different things and this seems about right for most people. One parent suggested that we should remind others ‘that phonics is not the be all and end all’ and that we should ’emphasise the importance of reading for fun’ – we agree. The purpose of the session was kept quite specific, but Mrs Burke will include some reminders about this in subsequent newsletters because we certainly want to promote a love of reading.
Thanks again to everyone who came along. The next sessions are on 20, 21 and 22 January.