1. STELLAR: Strategies for English Language Learning and Reading

2. STELLAR needs Parents’ Support • Home support – help your child learn English by providing English language reading materials at home. • Activate child’s interestby being a role model – show your child that you believe learning English is both enjoyable and useful in your daily life. • Understanding – That English language learning requires frequent exposure to listening, speaking, reading and writing opportunities and activities rather than use of worksheets alone.

3. How you can help your child • Go to the library together • Have lots of books, magazines and newspapers in your home • Give your child books about their special interests • Allow your child to choose books to read and reread • Read toand with your child (or, have your child read to you) • Talk about the books and characters read

4. Books that interest children have… • Clear print and colourful, attractive illustrations or photographs • A strong storyline • Interesting characters

5. Books that interest children … • Are about everyday life • Are repetitive and have rhyming words to help children remember words

6. Some language activities you can do with your child include… • Playing language games like word scavenger hunt. (Looking for a word in print materials.), Simon Says, Story chain (family or friends to carry on a story started by one person), rhyming word search • Reading aloud a book and asking your child to identify words beginning with the same sound, forexample,‘p’ – pancake, pick, put, police, pat, etc.

7. Some language activities you can do with your child include… • Helping your child learn more interesting words by thinking of new words to replace known words, for example, ‘big’ – huge, enormous, large, gigantic, etc. • Getting your child to retell a story to you in his or her own words • Suggesting that your child give a different ending to the story read

8. More Games for reading , writing and spelling… • Who am I? -- Describe a character from a recently read book/story • I spy with my little eye… (vocabulary, descriptions) • Mailbox – writing messages to child and he writes back • Say, Check,Trace & Write – procedure to learn spelling • Adapted fr. STELLAR/CPDD, MOE 2008

9. Some language items to highlight • Capitalization for beginning of sentences • Full-stops, Question marks, Commas, Apostrophe “’s” • Simple Present & Past tenses • Verbs with and without objects • Past participles

10. Other language items • Nouns – countable & uncountable nouns, -- Singular & Plural, -- Common & Proper Nouns • Determiners, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions (‘and’ & ‘because’) • Similes, proverbs, phrasal verbs