Advice please from any teachers/teaching assistants.

[RachA]

I've just started volunteering at my DS's school. I am helping out with the year 1's and i just do 1 hour on a Monday morning.

At the moment the class teacher has me reading with them. They are varying in what level they are at. I read with DS at home - he is in reception - so i have a general idea of how to go about it. My query is this: When a child gets a word that you can't sound out what do i do? Do i just get them to sound it out and then tell them what the word is if they can't work it out? Also the same for new words that they don't know at all. Do i tell them what the word is if they can't work the new word out?

If not then what do i do?


Thanks.

 

[jojo2605]

Hiya hun!! Strangely enough I'm doing the same as you at th emoment, volunteering at a school once a week to read!

I help them break it down to see if they can get it and if they struggle too much I just tell them what it is. WHen they've finished the book I go back through it pointing out words they struggled with to help them with them.

This week though (I'm reading to year 2) I was told they want to stop them stuttering so much and stop-starting all the time so I was told to just tell them if they stutter on the word! Not sure of the effectiveness of this but time will tell!

 

[RachA]

Hiya hun!! Strangely enough I'm doing the same as you at th emoment, volunteering at a school once a week to read!

I help them break it down to see if they can get it and if they struggle too much I just tell them what it is. WHen they've finished the book I go back through it pointing out words they struggled with to help them with them.

This week though (I'm reading to year 2) I was told they want to stop them stuttering so much and stop-starting all the time so I was told to just tell them if they stutter on the word! Not sure of the effectiveness of this but time will tell!

Thanks.

I find it so heartbreaking that the children are struggling so much. Each child at our school has a yellow book where as parents we note down the date, book title, what pages we read and a comment. The children i read with don't get read with even once a week with a parent/carer etc. I just find it so upsetting as we try our hardest to read with our son most nights and we feel bad if we don't manage to do it.

 

[livfc]

I used to work in a school,and one of my roles was to listen to the children read and help them to progress.
If a child was struggling with a word,I used to use the phonic sounds of the letters in the word,and quickly say each one and more often than not,what comes from your mouth sounds like the word.If the child didnt get the word it was never a problem,I just used to help them with the word and go back to it at the end.I used to find that the children picked up on these new words pretty quickly

What a wonderful thing for you to volunteer to do,Im sure the children love it x