Supporting Children's Reading: A Complete Short Course for Teaching Assistants, Volunteer Helpers and Parents

Being able to read is one of the most important skills in life and something we all want our children to achieve – for learning and for pleasure. Supporting Children’s Reading gives you the understanding you need of the reading process to ensure that children are effectively supported in their reading journeys.
This practical programme draws on the authors’ wealth of experience in delivering this kind of training and is an invaluable point of reference for anyone working with children to improve their reading. With links to downloadable online resources, it provides everything you need to deliver a bespoke training course tailored to meet your particular audience, including:


succinct and clear explanations of how reading works


time-saving resources such as photocopiable handouts and professionally designed visual display screens


advice on helping children to improve both their decoding and comprehension skills


guidance on strategies for helping a child deal with a problem word.

Supporting Children’s Reading is an accessible, ready-to-use resource to support teachers working with teaching assistants, volunteer ‘Reading Buddies’ and parents, to provide training on how to share books and listen to readers effectively. It will be especially useful for adults working with children who, for whatever reason, need extra support in developing reading skills.

Margaret Hughes taught for many years in a variety of mainstream and special, primary and secondary schools, later joining Warwickshire’s reading support service. She is co-author of the widely used spelling program, Starspell.
Peter Guppy was involved with Warwickshire’s reading support service for over 25 years, and is the author of the Survival series for secondary age learner readers.

@contents: Selected Contents: Foreword Introduction Presenter’s Guide Workshop 1. Basics of reading: the balance of clues - seen and unseen Workshop 2. More about clues Workshop 3. Teaching tips 1-5: phonics backing up meaning Workshop 4. Teaching tips 6-10: meaning backing up phonics Workshop 5. Three levels of reading Workshop 6. Frustration and Independent levels in action Workshop 7. Instructional level in action Workshop 8. It’s a team game: teaching assistant and teacher Appendix: A Reading Observation Sheet References