Phonics & Reading
At Grimoldby Primary School, we use Bug Club for our phonics and reading, and structured daily phonics lessons take place from Nursery through to Year 2. This page tells you all about Bug Club and there are two videos at the bottom with guidance for parents on supporting their child's reading at home.
What is Bug Club?
Bug Club Phonics is a synthetic phonics program that provides everything needed to help children succeed in early reading.
It combines a comprehensive teaching program and fully decodable print books with an online reading world which includes eBooks, interactive assessments and games.
Using the printed books
Inside every printed book there are notes to help you make the most of reading with your child.
Inside front cover: for younger children, these notes identify words with which children may need help and give ideas and strategies to help you feel confident that you know how best to help. For older children, the notes are intended to deepen each child’s understanding of the book. They provide background information about the time or place the book was written or sometimes information about the author or illustrator.
Inside back cover: these notes suggest puzzles and challenges that help children think about their reading. These include ‘Find it!’ activities that encourage children to revisit the text; ‘Share it!’ tasks that may involve making or writing something, and other ideas that offer ideas for further reading.
Using the online reading world
If you have access to an internet connection, your child can enjoy reading Bug Club books online as well as in print. Each child has a unique homepage and can log into it by following these steps:
Enter the login details. (School code: hww6)
Your child’s homepage will appear.
Reading a book online
We allocate most books to your child according to their reading levels, but may also allocate books that are beyond their level that are of high interest or linked to the class project. These books will appear in the ‘My Stuff’ area of their personal homepages.
Throughout the books there are quiz questions for your child to complete. To answer a question, just click on the bug icon. Your child does not need to finish all the quiz questions in one sitting and can come back to a book later.
When your child has finished all the quiz questions in a book, he or she will earn ‘ActiveLearn Coins’. By reading more books, your child will earn enough coins to ‘buy’ a reward in one of the many reward schemes. The answers to the quiz questions will be sent back to our teacher site so that we can see how your child is progressing. We will also be able to assign more books for your child to read if the virtual book bag is running low.
When your child has finished a book, it will move to ‘My Library’. Children can read these books again if they want to, or they can choose new books from ‘My Stuff’.
Reading with your child
When sharing a book with your child, try to take opportunities to talk about the book - before, during and after reading.
Before reading: look at the book cover and talk about your child’s expectations. Is the book likely to be fiction or non-fiction? Have you read other books together about these characters or by this author? What does your child think the book is going to be about?
While reading: support your child when unknown words need tackling: you can sound them out, split them into syllables, or identify suffixes and prefixes. Remind your child to listen to the words while reading them, to make sure that they make sense. Have a ‘meaning check’ every now and again to ensure that your child understands the text.
After reading: talk about the book. What was it about? Did it match your child’s expectations? Ask questions beginning with the words how and why to check that your child has been able to read between the lines. Ask whether anything seemed puzzling. Then ask your child to explain what the best and worst bits of the book were, and why.
Reading throughout our school
