Early Reading and Phonics

We believe that teaching reading at the very start of a pupil's learning journey should be wrapped up in a world of adventure, excitement and joy that only sharing stories and books together can bring.

Our curriculum is built around high quality texts. We understand the importance of exposing our children to the very best books and stories. Our classrooms are places where books are read, talked about and enjoyed.

This approach begins with our youngest children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One.

In order to support our early adventurers to read for themselves, we use phonics as our prime approach to the teaching of reading. We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised scheme. In Foundation 1, pre-phonics in taught to embed children's listening and blending skills. Phase 2-4 are taught in Foundation 2 and Phase 5 is taught in Year 1.

Children in Foundation 2 and Year 1 take part in a minimum of three weekly reads with a reading book matched to their phonics level. All children from Foundation 1 to Year 2 also take home a library book of their choosing to be shared with an adult at home.

We also regularly revise Phase 5 phonics in Year 2 for application when reading and spelling to ensure that our children have the very best knowledge and understanding to help them develop these important skills.

Further information about how phonics and reading is taught can be found here on the Little Wandle website. There are also videos and support materials.

More about early reading...

 Children read decodable texts that are closely aligned to the phonemes and graphemes  that they have been taught in class. Books are provided that are closely matched to pupils' growing phonic knowledge so that they can blend to read successfully. We use Collins Big Cat Phonics books to start our children on the road to reading. 

Children have opportunities to read every day. This may be through whole class reading, small group reading, independent reading and one to one reading. Children also participate in a minimum of three group reads in Foundation 2 and Year 1. Opportunities to further develop reading skills and knowledge are also provided across the curriculum. We firmly believe that reading is the key which unlocks the curriculum and so it is vital that all pupils make a good start on their reading journey. In order for children to practise and consolidate their reading skills, we also provide opportunities for reading  in our continuous provision. 

We place a high priority on getting everyone reading and, because of this, children read regularly with an adult in school. Pupils take home a reading book every night but also take home a 'Recommended Read' book to share at home. We encourage our pupils to change their own reading book when they have read it twice - once to support decoding and once to develop fluency and to deepen their understanding. Practise, practise, practise is the key!

Each year group from Year 1 onwards has a booklet with 50 of the very best books to read for their age. These books are to encourage our children to love reading and to help them to engage with a diverse range of authors, genres and topics. How many have you read together so far?!

Our fabulous 'recommended reads' lists can be found on the year group class pages.

Please have a look at our reading spine below. It sets out the books, poems, rhymes and authors we will meet on our reading journey though school.

Reading in Key Stage Two

We believe that teaching reading should be at the very heart of the curriculum and that through reading and sharing high quality texts a child’s learning journey should be filled with excitement, wonder and joy. Children read daily, this includes encouraging children to read for pleasure and to enjoy and discuss the books they are reading.  In KS2 the focus is primarily on teaching reading comprehension.  Children are taught reading comprehension daily as a whole class. These lessons focus on the key reading compression strategies of activating background knowledge, prediction, clarifying, asking questions, inference and summarising.  Throughout these sessions, there is a focus on developing children’s vocabulary (which is a core curriculum driver.)  In addition to this, children are taught to read through small group and individual reading interventions.   These include reading inference small group interventions and individual and small group phonic interventions. 

Teaching children to read is a high priority and so children read regularly with adults in school (1:1 reading.)  We also actively encourage children to read independently for pleasure. Each classroom has an engaging reading environment/book to engage and motivate children to read.  In addition, children are encouraged to read and share books at home and so all children take home a book-banded book to support independent reading for pleasure.  Throughout KS2, each year group has a booklet with 50 of the very best books to read for their age. These are each year group’s ‘recommended reads’ These books are to encourage our children to love reading and to help them to engage with a diverse range of authors, genres and topics. Our fabulous 'recommended reads' lists can be found on the year group class pages.

Also, please have a look at our reading spine. It sets out the books, poems, rhymes and authors our children will meet on our reading journey through school.

WRITING

In English we teach writing using high quality texts  as a stimulus. We have a strong focus on developing vocabulary, using star words in all lessons across the curriculum in order to broaden our vocabulary  and deepen our understanding.  We consider how authors play with sentence structure, language and words and try to emulate this when we write. 

We have mapped out writing across the curriculum where we produce longer pieces of text. These might be recounts, non-chronological reports or hybrid texts to stretch and challenge our older pupils. We write to inform, entertain, persuade and discuss following the work of Michael Tidd. 

Writing in Key Stage One

In Key Stage One we focus on securing sentence construction, building stamina to chunk sentences up into whole texts. We work hard to support our pupils to apply their phonics knowledge to spell with increasing accuracy.

We provide opportunities for pupils to practise and apply their writing skills throughout our provision. All classrooms have dedicated writing centres filled all the with resources budding writers need,  as well as writing opportunities offered in all areas. 

Gareth Baker - Patron of Reading

We welcomed Gareth Baker, a local author, to the Priestsic family on Monday 16th May. He will be working with children over the next couple of years to help to foster a life-long love of reading. He spent the day in classes across the school sharing stories and top tips for becoming a writer. The children had a fantastic day!