Dear Wildflower Families,

I hope you are doing well and that you are staying warm as the weather becomes brisk. We have just completed our school learning plan for the year. Each public school in BC is mandated to have a school learning plan that connects back to their school district’s strategic plan. Our goals are as follows:

1. Improve literacy proficiency for all learners by establishing structures to identify and fill gaps in literacy skills.
2. Improve numeracy proficiency for all learners.
3. Improve learning and well-being of our at-risk learners

This year we have kept two of our goals from last year and refined our literacy goal to be more specific and actionable. We have also identified literacy, reading and writing, as a major focus of the school this year. 

One of the key features of Wildflower is that Fridays are dedicated to home learning, and in almost every home learning plan there is guidance to read at home. I thought it might be helpful to share some scientifically researched strategies for reading with your child and supporting their literacy development.

Early Literacy

Phonics and phonemic awareness are critical for learning to read because they help children understand the relationship between sounds and letters, enabling them to decode unfamiliar words. Developing these skills lays the foundation for reading fluency and comprehension by allowing children to recognize words more quickly and accurately.

Here are three effective activities that parents can do at home or on car rides to help children develop phonemic and phonic awareness:

1. Rhyming Games

• Play rhyming games by saying a word and having your child come up with words that rhyme with it (e.g., cat, hat, mat).
• Why it works: Rhyming helps children recognize sound patterns and identify similarities in word endings, which strengthens phonemic awareness.

2. Clap the Syllables

• Say a word aloud (e.g., “butterfly”) and clap for each syllable as you say it: “but-ter-fly.” Then, have your child join in or try it with new words.
• Why it works: Clapping out syllables helps children hear and break down words into smaller sound units, a critical phonemic awareness skill.

3. Segmenting Sounds

• Practice breaking words into individual sounds (e.g., for “cat,” break it into /k/ /a/ /t/). Say the word slowly and ask your child to identify each sound.
• Why it works: This teaches phonemic segmentation, which is essential for both reading and spelling as children learn to map sounds to letters.

Phonics and phonemic awareness are critical for learning to read because they help children understand the relationship between sounds and letters, enabling them to decode unfamiliar words. Developing these skills lays the foundation for reading fluency and comprehension by allowing children to recognize words more quickly and accurately.

Paired Reading

The most impactful way to support your child in reading, is to read with them.  Paired reading is when a beginning reader reads with a more fluent partner. Even just ten minutes a day has been shown to accelerate a student’s progress by a factor of three to five. The process is simple, sit with your child and read together. As you read together, your child should use their finger to track the words. If they are wanting to read solo for a bit, you can stop reading and they can read until they encounter difficulty or just want your support. At the end of the reading you can discuss the book and the reading process with them. Here is a short video explaining the process: How To do Paired Reading

Discussions

We read for many different reasons, but the core reading skill is comprehension. Comprehension is often fostered through conversations and discussion with another person. IT can be difficult though to know what questions to ask to engage children in productive discussions. Here are a list of questions that you can draw on to engage your child in discussion:

1. How are __________ and ___________ alike?

2. How are you like or unlike the character in this story?

3. How is the story like another story we have read?

4. What is the main ide of _______________?

5. What do you think causes ______________?

6. Which one is the best _____________ and why?

7. What are some possible solutions for the problem of ____________?

8. Do you agree of disagree with _______________. Why?

9. What do you still not understand about?

10. How does ______________ affect ________________?

Dialogue Journaling

It can be tougher to get older kids to read with you, and sometimes it can even be tough to get them to talk with you about what is happening in their life. While reading and writing are two distinct processes, writing is part of the reading process, and years of scientific research have demonstrated that reading and writing are linked. Journaling has long been suggested as an excellent way for students to engage in personal and reflective writing. Dialogue journaling is a different type of journaling that is kept between two participants such as a parent and child. It is also a great way to connect with your child and can allow for profound conversations around topics that really matter to you and your child. Here is how it works, the parent begins the dialogue journal by writing a note to their child in a notebook. You then give the notebook to your child, and they respond to what you wrote to them. It is good to start out very informally and over time progress to deeper more sensitive topics. This can be done with any age of child, for example younger kids can draw pictures in response to your prompt whereas older kids can write full paragraphs. I did it with my son when he was in grade 3 and he really enjoyed it.

Upcoming Dates

Oct. 8^th – Photo Day

Oct. 8^th – PAC Meeting

Oct. 14^th – Thanksgiving Day (no school)

Oct. 15^th – PAC Clothing Swap

Oct. 25th – Provincial Pro-D Day (no school for students)

Oct. 28^th – Photo Retake Day

Nov. 6^th – Indigenous Veteran’s Day

Nov. 7th - Remembrance Day Assembly

Nov. 11^th – Remembrance Day

Dec. 12^th – Last day of school before Winter Break

Jan. 6^th – First day back to school after Winter Break

Interesting Parenting Info

What 'Hurried Child Syndrome' Is and Isn't

Important Reminders

• Does your child have a sibling who is planning on attending Wildflower next year? Please make sure to fill out the contact form, and let the office or your child’s teacher know.

• If you are interested in volunteering in the library please reach out to our teacher librarian at Claire.Hewson@sd8.bc.ca

All the best

Nick

Principal of Wildflower