Children become confident independent readers through:

• knowing how to build words using letters and sounds
• recognising words at sight
• understanding how words go together to make sentences
• knowing about different sorts of books and how they work

As teachers share books with their classes all these skills are taught and developed.

A lot of reading practice will take part in small groups where each child has a copy of the same text. The teacher or teaching assistant will introduce the book, ask questions, discuss different strategies then set a reading challenge. Children will be encouraged to read at their own pace while the teacher works with every child in turn. At the end of a session the whole group discusses the book to check they have understood. Sessions like this are called group guided reading. They allow the teacher and children to spend much longer working with a piece of text than is possible if every child reads a different book to the teacher.

Becoming an independent reader

As well as group reading and reading to an adult, children will also begin to read and enjoy books in pairs or by themselves. In many schools time is set aside each day for this to happen. Reading logs are often kept and these may be sent home for you to record how your child responds when reading at home. Many schools also have volunteer reading helpers who may also hear your child read and note progress in the reading log.

An equally important part of learning to read independently is hearing books read aloud. This will probably happen regularly at school throughout the primary years. Hearing language in this way allows your child to focus on the meaning without having to concentrate on working out the words. This really helps children to develop an understanding of the different sorts of texts and will assist your child in tackling similar texts independently at a later stage.