“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

Frederick Douglass

Phonics and Reading

Reading Intent

All children will read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read securely and with confidence in order to prepare them for all future learning experiences.

Implementation

All children are in receipt of daily reading experiences - through daily phonics lessons in EYFS and KS1; daily Whole Class Shared Reading lessons in KS1 and 2; high-quality shared texts in literacy lessons and through daily story time sessions in every class.

Whole Class Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when students join in or share the reading of a book or other text while guided and supported by a teacher. The teacher explicitly models the skills of proficient readers, including reading with fluency and expression. VIPERS support the teaching and learning of comprehension skills, ensuring experience of and familiarity with a range of question types (Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval, Sequence / Summarise). Whole Class Shared Reading enables children to access and enjoy a range of rich, high quality texts. Resources used for Whole Class Shared Reading include fiction, poetry and non-fiction texts.

At Wainscott, we also encourage reading for pleasure. Reading for pleasure means any reading that is primarily for enjoyment. This includes: books, magazines, comics, poems, picture books, newspapers as well as fiction novels. Research has shown that reading for pleasure can result in increased empathy, improved relationships with others, improved wellbeing and an increased insight into the view and opinions of others.

All children in the Early Years Foundation Stage and KS1, receive a discrete phonics session every day. Most children are taught in whole class phonics lessons. The children’s progress is regularly assessed and interventions are put in place quickly to bridge any gaps in learning. Phonics teaching takes place daily and currently follows the Essential Letters and Sounds scheme. Within each lesson, children revisit, review, practise and then apply their phonic skills.

Essential Letters and Sounds - 'Getting all children to read well, quickly.'

Essential Letters and Sounds is a Systematic Synthetic Phonics programme that is rigorous and engaging. It enables children to make accelerated progress and supports teachers to ensure that all children, regardless of their background or starting points, keep up rather than ‘catch up’. The programme uses a consistent and repetitive approach, alongside interactive whiteboard resources, supporting worksheets, mnemonics and rhymes to enable children to learn to read well, quickly. The scheme also combines continuous and reactive assessment with robust interventions to ensure all children reach their reading potential.

It aligns with a large number of texts from Oxford University Press which will be used to support phonics instruction at school and at home.

We have a variety of reading scheme books which are colour banded and closely matched to our phonics scheme. Colour banded books help adults and children choose the right books for their reading ability. They begin with wordless books, progressing to the top level of black in which children are reading ready for secondary school and beyond. The book bands correlate to particular phases in the phonics scheme and so can be matched carefully to each child’s learning and reading level. In Reception and Year One, adults select appropriate books for each child to read at home. From Year Two, children are supported to choose their own reading book to take home. This is carefully monitored to ensure that books are matched to children’s reading ability and that children are moved onto another band in the scheme when they are ready. Children take these reading books home every day and, in all year groups, are encouraged to read with an adult daily. These reads are then logged in their school reading record and returned to school each day for the class teacher to acknowledge.

Reading is celebrated regularly, through the weekly presentation of ‘Reader of the Week’ certificates to a child in each class. We also hold regular larger-scale celebrations of reading, such as World Book Day. At least once a term, parents are invited into school to read with their child(ren) and children throughout the school read with their reading buddies from another year group. 

Building Futures

At Wainscott, we aim to develop a love and appreciation of reading which will stay with children for life. We believe that reading is central to a child’s understanding of the school curriculum and the world around them.

Parent Guides to Support Reading and Phonics

For additional ideas around how you might support your child at home in reading and phonics please visit the parent workshop area of the website.