Friday 23rd September 2016 Dear parents/Carers

FS2 ‘Teach Your Monster to Read’ Programme As you will be aware we have now begun our daily Phonics teaching sessions and are introducing the children to a series of new sounds each week, these sounds can be found within your child’s sound book. As well as our daily phonics inputs we have been looking at ways for you to help your child at home with phonics and have found an excellent interactive programme developed by Usborne Books.

‘Teach your Monster to Read’ is a series of free phonics based games that takes children on a fantastic adventure through magical worlds where they meet island kings and collect letters to win prizes. They will also adopt and customise a monster, who they guide through the learning process. This is all based on the phonics scheme that we follow in school during lessons and will aim to not only help children to consolidate their phonic knowledge but to also provide them with opportunities for learning alternative spellings of sounds and for practicing their reading comprehension skills. We will be signing all FS2 children up on ‘Teach your Monster to Read’ and they will each receive an individual log in and password which will allow them to access the website both in school and at home on a desktop computer/laptop. All children will be shown how to log in using their first name and password and given the opportunity to explore the website during school time with their class teacher. We would appreciate it if you could take the time to help your child access the ‘Teach your Monster to Read’ website regularly. The activities/games can then be completed independently or as a shared activity for you and your child. We are confident that this is something that will not only help to boost the children’s confidence in phonics and reading but that it will also be an enjoyable and engaging activity for them. Teach your Monster to Read is currently free on all desktop computers/laptops however should you wish to the games are also being made available to download as paid for apps for ipads on the apple store. Thank you for your continued support. Yours sincerely Mrs. Sue Allen and Mrs. Clare Lindley Foundation Stage 2 Class Teachers

CL/LC/FS2 ad hoc/TeachYourMosterToRead.docx