Seeing and celebrating reading milestones: developing the ‘Parent Reader’ training programme

Parental involvement in the Early Years education of their child is essential, as it can significantly improve performance levels while also creating a more enjoyable learning experience for the child. Not only do parents get the satisfaction of witnessing their child develop key learning skills, they also get to understand and appreciate their educational journey more intently through this shared experience. This is why we are so keen to encourage parents’ involvement at Pre-Prep school and it is the reason why we organise training sessions that allow parents to actively support their children’s education. A key initiative that we have recently undertaken at Pre-Prep – and one which we’re very proud of – is the ‘Parent Reader’ training session. The idea was born out of our parents’ evident willingness to support children with their reading during school time. In order to encourage and harness that willingness, we started a training session with the aim of showing parents some of the basic expectations of phonics, sight words and general reading skills that their children were in the process of learning. Parents were taught to recognise some of the most valuable ‘reading milestones’ and to praise their children whenever they attained them, in order to identify and reinforce the importance of their breakthrough. While we had already instituted phonics meetings for parents, this new training session now represents a practical chance for them to get involved and collaborate with other parents. During our sessions, where parents work their way through the six phases we teach in phonics, everyone must actively participate – no sitting back and just listening! Everyone is expected to engage with one another in order to experience and understand some of the more challenging areas for children in the acquisition of reading skills. After the first meeting, it quickly became apparent that these training sessions were moving beyond the original aim of encouraging parental support of reading. Those parents who attended raised a number of insightful questions and made many reflective observations which resulted in some extremely productive conversations. Parents wanted to know how to encourage early writing skills too, they wanted to understand how their children learned phonetically and how best to measure their expectations of their own child’s reading level. Continued reading outside school was also explored, as were elements of prior schooling and parents’ language concerns. In short, what began as a parental support for reading session quickly evolved into something much more ambitious and involved. From that first meeting onwards, many parents began to appreciate just how much was expected of their children, which helped them realise that every one of their child’s reading achievements marks an important milestone and should be recognised as such. We will be expanding the Parent Reader training programme even further and we welcome you to join us next term for training sessions that will help you better understand your child’s reading journey and enable you to encourage them at every step along the way. Emma Button Head of Pre-Prep