Reading and Phonics
Pupils are encouraged to become confident, enthusiastic, critical and independent readers. They will enjoy reading a variety of forms for a range of purposes: information, interest and enjoyment.
Shared Reading
Within English lessons, shared reading is an essential tool to teach reading skills and develop enjoyment with the whole class. Either big books are used as the main teaching resource, multiple copies of texts or a range of interactive, information or visual texts.
Although there is more of an emphasis on reading from screen than ever before and our aim is to promote the use of ICT, we always ensure our children still receive a balanced exposure to ‘real’ books.
A wide range of genres is covered and the teacher’s modelling of reading develops the children’s interest and love of reading as well as skills, knowledge and understanding.
Home Reading
In Reception and KS1, whilst children are learning to read, they will bring home two reading books: a Little Wandle reading book and a Sharing book.
The Little Wandle book will be the fully-decodable book that the children have read in sessions during the week. Children should be able to read the text confidently and increasing fluency.
The Sharing book is a book that the children have chosen themselves from the class library. These books will not be fully decodable but should be read by the adult to the child to foster a love of reading.
In Key Stage 2, children are able to borrow a reading for pleasure book from the school library to enjoy at home.
Reading Practice Sessions
In Reception and Key Stage 1, reading practice sessions take place three times per week. Little Wandle fully-decodable books are matched to children's confident reading ability so that they can develop accuracy, automaticity and prosody.
In Key Stage 2, reading practice sessions take place daily in a carousel format, with children reading and discussing texts twice a week with an adult. As children progress through Key Stage 2, they enjoy reading longer texts and novels, moving to books that are not fully decodable in Upper Key Stage 2. They will read and discuss the book with an adult and also have a range of other activities to stretch their comprehension skills across a range of different strands of reading.
Phonics
Our school has adopted the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme to teach phonics discretely. Through Reception and Key Stage 1, children will:
- learn 44 phonemes and the corresponding letters/letter groups using simple picture prompts and mnemonics
- learn to read words using sound blending
- read lively stories featuring words they have learned to sound out
- participate in meaningful discussion led by an adult.
They also
- learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 phonemes
- learn to write words by segmenting
- learn to build sentences orally using adventurous vobabulary
- start with simple sentences and develop towards more complex ones by the end of the programme.
Click here to find an overview of the programme progression in Reception and Key Stage 1.
Phonics is taught on a daily basis in Reception and Key Stage 1, and is continued as necessary in Key Stage 2.
Some of Year 6 have been reading the Hunger Games in Guided Reading. They role played interviews with the tributes. Click the links below to hear how they went!
Recommended Reading
These are suggested titles which your children may enjoy.
Visit the Oxford Owl website (external link) which has has over 100 free ebooks for to enjoy with your child.
Butlers Road, Handsworth Wood, Birmingham, B20 2NY
0121 554 9581
enquiry@stteresa.bham.sch.uk