Provide a rich range of quality children’s literature and dialogic shared reading experiences to involve children in critical engagement with narratives, characters and plots.
Provide a range of everyday signs and written texts in play areas (labels, lists, recipes, instructions, etc.) so children can include these in their play.
Make story books with children in print and/or digital formats to make personalised and meaningful books and ebooks to read with children, and that children can read themselves.
Make a classroom book of children’s own stories, scribed by an adult and/or drawn by children.
Ensure children have access to a wide range of literature that represents diversity in the local and global community, ensuring every child has the opportunity to find a character they can relate to.
Introduce children to new words, and explore their meaning together e.g. by acting out words and playing games with words.
Provide story sacks and boxes and make them with the children for use in the setting and at home.
Help children to identify the main events in a story and to enact stories, for example in their imaginative play.
Provide story boards and props which support children to talk about a story’s characters and sequences of events.
Include playful, multisensory and creative experiences and games that promote children’s interest in reading and in developing phonics skills and knowledge.
Demonstrate using phonics as a strategy to decode words while children can see the text, e.g. using big books or an interactive whiteboard.
Provide varied texts, including decodable texts, and encourage children to use all their skills including their phonic knowledge to practise reading with the skills and knowledge they have, so they experience success.
Begin to introduce playful systematic phonics sessions in fun ways that capture children’s interest, sustain motivation and reinforce learning and success.
