There is a lot of focus on the phonics stage when children are learning to read. For some parents, it doesn’t feel intuitive but my encouragement to anyone who has a child at this stage in their reading is to go with the programme that the school are using and follow the way they are doing this. It is a good thing to have a structured approach and it is better to all focus in the same direction. At the same time, I’d suggest reading to your child. Share beautiful picture books and talk around them – the ideas, the friendships, the relationships, the settings… Make the time reading together positive. Read them again and again and enjoy the illustrations. The drawings my children have done at home (about books) have mostly been inspired by sharing these types of books.

Once you have passed the phonics stage and you feel your child is reading and beginning to devour books (and don’t worry if this happens at a different point to their friends), I’d still suggest reading to and with your children. I think we sometimes halt with the sharing reading and expect reading fluency to develop with independent reading. Making sharing books a positive time for you and your child means you both will want to do it. It isn’t the ‘we are reading 10 pages of your book while we are watching your sibling at their football/swimming practice’ task-driven thing – this type of reading is all ‘carrot’ and no ‘stick’. It is great to build an enjoyable time and space and for me these three elements stick out as key things to remember.