Reading helps children develop language and listening skills, focus skills, stimulates their imagination and helps prepare them to understand the written word.
At Morning Star we have built a strong reading culture, and every child is encouraged to develop a love for reading. Our methods mean that every child has time each day dedicated to reading, this is reading independently, reading aloud, being read to or and reading with peers. This practice nurtures development in a number of areas.
Daily independent reading strengthens our students understanding of vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure. It also helps with focus skills. We encourage assignments and direction where students have to perform ‘close reading’ tasks, challenging students to think thoughtfully, giving a critical analysis of a text, focusing on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text’s form, craft, meanings.
At Morning Star we read books aloud to children daily. It stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand their phonics and alphabet recognition.Ms Keyleigh Stakem | Kindergarten Lead Teacher | Tay Ho campus
We encourage students to read in groups and with peers, this strengthens their understanding and encourages debate and knowledge sharing, ultimately improving our students’ communication skills.
Our wide choice of reading materials allows our students to find topics and genres that interest them, making sure they are both extrinsically and intrinsically motivated to read.
Allowing children to choose their own books gives their reading purpose. It is our job as teachers to create a love for reading at a young age, which instills independence, curiosity and language development. Reading does not only allow students to grow academically but it also shows them the world from a different perspective.Ms Sarah Cloete | Grade 1 Teacher | Tay Ho campus
Allowing children to select their own books means that they are selecting topics that interest them, but interest alone will not help students achieve their optimum reading growth, so how do we help this? At Morning Star we have a range of leveled readers and books at different reading difficulty. This means we can match the student’s individual level to the right book of their chosen interest. What this means is that students are reading books that are appropriately challenging and are interesting for them, this is how we achieve optimum reading growth.
