Dear parents,

The Literacy Trust outlines that ‘children who are confident readers by the time they leave primary school are more likely to succeed in secondary school and in adulthood’. At St John’s we put reading at the centre of everything we do to help children become life-long readers. To continue to help the children of St John’s to access high-quality reading books whilst at home, I have signed up to the Reading Planet online library. Your child will use their log in number and password to access online books that their teacher has assigned them. They will also have to put in the ‘centre ID’ when they log in which is: 199591. There is a quiz after each book so that your child can practise their comprehension skills too. I have put together a help video here to help you access these reading books from home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPyomG4ykFM .

If you would like to find out more about the teaching of reading and phonics, I have created some parent workshop videos about phonics, reading phonics books, learning tricky words and how we teach reading onto the school YouTube channel. Here is the link for you to follow: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbkK5BMcCobLOSyuOC5rnk3RsM6QXYwqS These videos are to give you more of an idea about how we teach reading and English in general from reception to year 6. Ideally, these workshops would have taken place in school, but in the current situation that isn’t possible. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to still try and support reading with your children during this tricky time of home schooling. I hope they are helpful to you. Please email enquiry@st-johns-pri.bham.sch.uk with any feedback or questions and I will try to get back to you as soon as I can.

I hope you are all staying safe and well and are managing to enjoy some family time.

Take care,

Mrs Kirby

English coordinator