Reading at home help (turquoise level - year 1)

[2012blues]

This may seem like a ridiculous question but, DS's reading seems to have improved a lot in recent months and he's progressed through a couple of bands quite quickly after spending about 6 months on one band!

He is now reading turquoise books which he is comfortable with, and is handling the steep increase in number of words.

My question is, should I be changing the way I read with him at home? For example, unless it's a poetry book or short stories we are still doing the whole book in one go (which takes a while). He wants to do it like this but I wonder whether I should be taking smaller sections and then talking about them in more detail (we don't discuss the book much .

Also, should I be encouraging him to read his books by himself, listening to a bit here and there. He is still reluctant to read to himself, only really reading when we ask him to read to us.

What do you do?

My DD is also on turquoise level and we also tend to read the book in one go (sometimes she does get a longer one which we split up). DD is a keen reader so she tends to pick up books (not necessarily reading scheme books) and pick out bits for herself. My DS was more like your DS and regarded reading as a evil to be endured (he's now Y3 and finally reading for pleasure!)

I will occasionally ask questions/make comments as I go along, or say something like "what do you feel about Tom" but we don't necessarily discuss the book over much. If there's a "hard" word I might check she knows what it means. If she reads to DH I will ask her if she enjoyed the book and what happened, so that does give us a bit of check that she's understood it (or DH will ask her about it if I read with her).

My DTDs are on turquoise too. They refuse to read the books in sections (grrr) and insist on doing them in one go, so we do. Then we have hardly any time to talk about the books, though the DTDs do have to put a comment in their reading diary, so I will sometimes say "what did you think abou the book" or "why did you decide to write that for your comment". My mum is an ex primary teacher, and when she listens to them read, she spends ages talking about the books That's only every so often though, so I guess she has more time...