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Supporting children's development
Supporting children's development

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Encouraging reading

Introduction

Encouraging reading is a general introduction to some important aspects of how children develop their literacy and reading skills.

It aims to raise your awareness of some of the main issues in:

  • How children learn to read
  • How you as a teaching assistant can encourage children to enjoy reading and improve their literacy skills.

Initiatives from the Welsh Books Council (http://www.cllc.org.uk [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ) like the Summer Reading Challenge and the Quick Reads series of books highlight the benefits of early support with reading.

Links to further information/ relevant projects to help promote reading for pleasure

Organisations: reading for pleasure

The Welsh Government published its National Literacy Programme in May 2012, describing it as ‘a national programme to drive up literacy standards in our schools’ and setting out ‘actions the Welsh Government and its partners need to take to achieve a step change in literacy standards over the next 5 years’. The Minister, in his statement, said that it would require ‘every school in Wales to focus on the development of literacy skills’.

It is not only parents who can offer this early vital support, but also teachers, teaching assistants and the range of other learning support workers. Often, teaching assistants working in a one-to-one relationship with a child are in a much stronger position to read with them or listen to their reading.

This section consists of three topics:

  1. Babies and the early years
  2. Moving from the early years to primary
  3. Boys, girls and reading.

They cover the different stages of child development and some of the ways you can encourage reading and literacy in each of these stages, from the early years to young people in secondary schools