English Reading

As Linguists...

Children will:

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding and develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information.               
• Write clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting their language and style in and for a range of contexts, purposes and audiences  
• Use discussion in order to learn; and elaborate and explain clearly their understanding and ideas both formally and informally   

Intent, Implementation and impact of phonics and reading.

We believe that ability to read is fundamental to our children succeeding; enabling them to access the next stage of their education and beyond. Our curriculum has been designed to ensure that pupils have opportunities to develop a love of reading. Our aim is to ensure that pupils gain a thirst for reading a range of genres and participating in discussions about the books; exploring the language used by different authors and the impact the written words have on the reader. Our curriculum has also been designed to ensure that pupils not only read for pleasure but to use books to research and gather new knowledge to extend their understanding.

Phonics (reading and spelling)

At Oake, Bradford and Nynehead Primary School we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach EYFS and Year 1 reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Implementation

Foundations for phonics in Little Acorns Preschool

• We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:
  • sharing high-quality stories and poems
  • learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
  • activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
  • attention to high-quality language.

• We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

• We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
• Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:
  • Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
  • Children in Year 1 review Phases 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Guided Reading in Years 2-6:

• We teach children to read through reading practice sessions four times a week.
  • These are led by the class teacher.
  • We follow a comprehensive scheme of text types with a variety of focusses through Grammarsaurus.
• Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:
  • decoding
  • prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
  • comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.
• We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 and above who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics screening check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Rapid Catch-up assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Rapid Catch-up resources – at pace. 
• These short, sharp lessons last 15-20 minutes daily and have been designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading.
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Home reading

• In Ash class, we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.
• Books have been individually selected to ensure they are suitable to each child's need and ability. Each class ensures there are opportunities for a child to read 1:1 with an adult during the week and the bottom 20% of each class are read with at least 3x per week.
• Every child has a home-reading diary to log when they read. This is checked every week by the class teacher to monitor home reading and address any issues.
• In Oake, Bradford and Nynehead Primary School, children are expected to read a minimum of 3 times per week and have this diarised in their home-reading diary by an adult.

Children develop a pleasure of reading

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002)

‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at our school and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures. Our English curriculum encourages a love for reading following the Literacy Tree scheme of learning where each unit is created around a short story or book.

Comprehension

At Oake, Bradford and Nynehead Primary School we value reading as a crucial life skill. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose. Good comprehension draws from linguistic knowledge (in particular of vocabulary and grammar) and on knowledge of the world. 

We teach reading to children as a whole class, starting from when they have completed the Little Wandle Fluency Test. We follow the Grammarsuarus reading scheme. 

Impact

Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One. This way, children can focus on developing their fluency and comprehension as they move through the school. Attainment in reading is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of Key Stage One and Two. These results are measured against the reading attainment of children nationally. Phonics Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1. Half termly checks to ensure that pupils are places within the correct teaching group and that progress is being made

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

• Assessment for learning is used:
  • daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support
  • weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

• Summative assessment for Reception and Year 1 is used:
  • every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
  • by SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.