Reading

We have the highest aspirations for our children to learn to read and make reading a priority at Longshaw Nursery School. Children have the opportunity to explore books everyday in nursery and develop a real love of reading. The most important starting point is to read to our children.  Children thrive on repetition, so when we read books over again. We have core texts in nursery that we love to share, children will become confident in the story language, actions and will eventually be able to share the story independently.   

Children need lots of opportunities to develop familiarity with stories, nursery rhymes, poems and songs. As children grow, they build strong emotional attachments to the memories associated with learning stories, nursery rhymes, poems and songs. They become an important link between past and present, as they are passed down from generation to generation.

How does story and rhyme support the needs of our children? 

• Sustain attention
• Learn thousands of new words
• Deepen their knowledge of words on every retelling
• Hear exaggerated patterns in words and phrases- discrete sounds, rhyme and alliteration
• Link thoughts from one part of the story to another
• Become familiar with complex and compound sentences
• Understand the emotions of others
• Build pictures in their minds from the words on a page
• Find out about new places, people and things
• Understand the nuance of humour
• Follow a plot with twists and turns
• Understand suspense and predict what’s about to happen next

Blackburn with Darwen Library Service

Please see https://www.blackburn.gov.uk/libraries-and-reading/childrens-libraries for information about the fantastic books and resources available for children.