Books for new school starters: match how they learn to read

The first year of school has a different name in each state and territory — Kindergarten (NSW, ACT), Prep (Queensland, Tasmania; Foundation in Victoria), Reception (SA), Pre-primary (WA) and Transition (NT) — but whatever it's called, it's the year letters start turning into words. Not every classroom teaches that the same way. The approach is the school's choice, and even two classes in the same school can differ, so knowing what worked for an older brother or sister isn't enough.

The quickest clue is in the school bag: the reader or workbook the class uses often shows the approach on the cover or inside. The second thing you need to know is the order in which letters are taught. A book full of letters your child hasn't learnt yet mostly teaches them one thing — that they can't read. You can find out both with a single question to the teacher; wording you can copy is further down.

If you're choosing a book as a gift for starting school and don't know the approach yet, go for a story to read aloud. More ideas for that big first day are in our article A gift for a new school starter.

When letters are added gradually across the whole year and the child puts them together into syllables, the first weeks after the summer holidays only allow texts built from a handful of letters. It's too early for a book of their own, and the class reader keeps them busy enough.

In those first months, picture-reading books work well: small pictures stand in for some of the words, so your child "reads" them on their own, while you read the short words in between or let them have a go. Around the middle of the year, when the class knows most of the letters, it's time for first books in large print with short words. Publishers produce whole series for beginning readers, and many are graded into levels, usually marked on the cover. Start with the lowest level or the shortest title, even if it looks babyish to you. Move up a level once your child can finish a book without much stumbling, usually in the second half of the year. Right now, the feeling of having read a whole book alone matters more than an exciting plot.

Watch out for long words and consonant clusters. "Strengths" or "scratched" are harder for a beginner in the first months than a whole sentence like "Mum has a map." If a page has several words like that, put the book away for a few months.

Some classes start with capital letters only, and the child reads by blending sounds rather than syllables. Letters are introduced faster, so a child taught this way can often read a short text about anything sooner than a classmate learning syllable by syllable — as long as it's written IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Lower-case print and handwriting come later.

That gives one strict rule for choosing a book: the whole text must be in capitals, not just the title. A book labelled for beginners but printed in lower case is unreadable for this child in the first months of the year. Check a sample page, not the cover. Some publishers print early readers entirely in capitals; pick the first one as soon as the class knows most of the capital letters, and start with the shortest story. Words split into syllables with hyphens won't bother your child, but they don't need them.

The tricky part is that the child reads aloud slowly, sound by sound. Don't correct them into syllables the way you may have learnt at school — they'd be getting two conflicting instructions.

Some classes teach children to read the sounds in a word smoothly into one another, without chopping it into pieces. At first the child reads deliberately slowly and stretches the sounds — that's not a mistake you need to "speed up" at home.

For a first book, this means short lines, large print and plenty of space between words, so the eye doesn't have to hunt for where to go next. These classes often work with their own reading materials, so it's worth asking which print and how long the texts are that the children are working with now, and choosing a book to match. Start with one that follows on from what the class is using, and give it to your child once they read whole short sentences at school. The teacher will happily suggest a title. After reading, ask your child what the text was about — understanding matters just as much here as getting through the words.

Reading alone is slow, hard work in the first year of school. If your child only had books they could read themselves, they'd be getting stories at the level of a class reader. So next to their own shelf they need a second one — the one you read from.