The school reading book is the most contact your family has with the phonics programme — and on a school night it competes with dinner, clubs and the profound tiredness of being five. The routine that survives contact with real life is short, anchored and kind. Here's the two-minute version.
Routines attached to clock times die by Wednesday; routines attached to existing habits last. After the snack, before the bath, first thing in the book-bag unpack — anywhere that already happens daily. Same anchor, every day, including the days it's only one page: the streak matters more than any session's length, because the real product is a child who expects reading to happen.
Ten seconds: wave at the tricky-word bookmark. Ninety seconds: the child reads — you supply tricky words instantly rather than making them siege the unsiegeable, and let decodable words get properly attacked. Twenty seconds: one specific piece of praise ("you read when without stopping!") beats a general "well done" every time. On energy, re-read yesterday's book instead — re-reading builds fluency and feels like a victory lap, because it is.
One honest specific: "read pp1–6, was still tricky, loved the dog page" tells the teacher exactly what to reinforce. "Lovely reading!" tells them the diary got signed. Honesty about struggles isn't telling tales — it's the channel working as designed.
Deathly boring is survivable: decodables are practice equipment, so let the child read it in a monster voice, then serve a real story from the home pile as pudding. Mysteriously hard is a flag: five-plus stumbles a page means the level's off — a friendly diary note sorts it ("found this one tough — could we try a step down?"). And when school books run out mid-week, the book finder knows which home books match the level.
General guidance, August 2026. Your school's reading policy and teacher take precedence. CAAC.