Parents of bilingual children: how do you navigate learning to read in both languages?

[Epli]

I am interested in the experiences of parents of bilingual children attending school in the UK or in another country where the main language of schooling is not the same as the one spoken at home.

We are both Polish and at home we speak only Polish with our daughter. We read to her in Polish, and she watches cartoons exclusively in Polish. She attends nursery full-time and, from what we've been told and heard, she speaks English well. I suspect her vocabulary is broader in Polish because of her exposure to books, etc., but she is on track with her English language development.
I am curious: what approach have you taken at primary school when help with spelling or reading was needed? Did you help even though your own pronunciation or accent might be far from native one? And how did you incorporate your native language into the mix?
I have friends in a similar position who practise spelling and reading in Polish with their child, but never do so in English (although they do make sure he practises—it’s just that he does it on his own so as not to mix the two).

Any other experiences?

We have practised reading and spelling in English and my native language. No big deal.

My kids are trilingual. Until they had a solid grasp of reading in the language spoken in school I didn’t introduce reading in any other language as I didn’t want to confuse them (I read books to them in the other languages but didn’t explain to them how to relate the sounds to the spelling as it’s varied between the three languages). Then I started in the school holidays so they weren’t distracted. They pick up the subsequent languages very fast as they have already internalised the concept of reading.
Of course, if they show interest earlier than you planned, jump on it.

I am in the same situation. As you live in English -language country, I wouldnt worry about English, but I take every opportunity to use my language with my child. One parent One Language usually works well, it worked for us. If you are still searching for an answer, here are some nice tips :
https://littlelingo.co.uk/bilingual-life/ .

One parent one language works best where each parent has a different native language.

It sounds like for OP both parents are Polish and therefore both have English as their second language, which I think make OPOL much more challenging.

I taught them to read first in English using an online program (head sprout I think), as this was their minority language. Then they learnt to read in the other language at school but not til age 7 which I find very late!

I am many years down the line, we are exclusively English at home other than some school vocabulary. They read in both languages and sound like locals.

Dont stress about this.

I think it depends on the languages.

Some languages are harder to learn to read than others. English is quite hard. So is Irish. Those with different scripts or characters are way harder and you need to attend second language school to have a real chance of developing fluency.

Spanish is quite easy if a child knows their letters.

We focussed on the language(s) used most in school.

Our third language had a different script so needed much more effort.