KS2 English Help and Support

[MyCloudTutor]

Hi,
I am ex-Primary School Teacher with over 10 years experience and I spent my last few years in the classroom as a KS2 Lead and English Lead. I now run a tutoring business for KS2 students and would like to offer any help and support for parents with children who struggle with English / Literacy. So ask away if you have any questions or need some advice.
Natasha

Thanks for the offer! What is the best way to increase vocab and be good at comprehension? 9yo DS loves to read but skips difficult words sometimes. He's not diagnosed but has autistic traits so difficult to get inferences too.

My dd is similar, she is autistic and struggles with comprehension. It's one of the areas the teacher has flagged up for us. She is a great reader when it comes to decoding but often really confused about the story!

@91treehouse You are welcome :) There are many different ways that you could work with your DS to improve his vocabulary. Things like playing word games (board games or apps), having lots of new experiences, encouraging them to read other materials instead of books such as leaflets or instruction. If he is a reluctant reader, audiobooks are a really good way to listen to stories and hear new words and its something they can listen to whilst doing something else like travelling or playing with lego.

When they come across new words when reading, there are lots of strategies I would recommend before turning to a dictionary. They can use the context - so reading before and after the word and see if they can find any clues for what the word might mean. They can also look to see if they can find 'root words' in a word. For example, uncomfortable has the root word 'comfort', a prefix 'un' which means not and the suffix 'able' which means having the power or skill. Or continuing to apply the phonics they learnt in KS1 is good too.

Inference is a hard skill for many children and I personally think it is best to start with inferences from pictures. There are plenty of picture books written for KS2 children which would be a good option. Sometimes it can be easier as well to write their own inferences before they can understand them in reading. So using 'show not tell' is a great technique - how do you show a character is afraid? They could be shaking, they might curl into a ball, they might hide their face, or peek a look through their hands. With reading, starting with character inference is a good start - what are they feeling, why did they do something, what are their motivations for doing something?

Hope that helps

@ShepherdMoons With comprehension, start with retrieval first. This is when your DD needs to look back into the text and find the answer which will be written there for her to find. Often, children can want to use their own ideas but with retrieval they have to remember that is is what it says in the text.
Then, once she is confident with retrieval, I'd move onto inference and you can use the techniques I have suggested to @91treehouse .
When listening to your daughter read, you could have her recap what she has read to you at the end of the reading session and then the next time you listen to her read, you could see if she can recap what happened the time before.
You can also map out what happens in the story, discussing what happened in the beginning, what was the problem, how did that get resolved, who were the main characters etc?
Again, listening to stories can be good as some children find they have a better understanding that way.