Phonics and Reading
Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will learn to do. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to become a confident and competent reader. We want all the children at the academy to love reading. This is why we work hard to make sure children develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.
We start by teaching phonics in the early years and this continues throughout key stage one. We use the Bug Club phonics scheme. Children learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. This is essential for reading, but it also helps children learn to spell well. Once children can blend sounds together to read words, they read books that match the phonics and the ‘tricky words’ they know. We combine discrete teaching of phonics with guided reading (small groups), shared reading (whole class) and class story time. Teachers regularly read to the children, too, so the children get to know and love all sorts of stories, poetry and information books. This helps to extend children’s vocabulary and comprehension, as well as supporting their writing.
Every child is different and children will learn to read at different speeds. By the end of Year 2, most children will be able to read aloud books that are at the right level for his or her age. Some older children will continue to access phonics work if they need further consolidation and development of reading skills. In the summer term, the government asks us to do a phonics check of all the Year 1 children. We will let you know how well your child has done.
Learning to read, write and communicate effectively are the most important things children will learn at primary school. Every child must become a confident and competent reader and communicator if they are to access all the opportunities our curriculum offers and develop the foundations to become lifelong learners. The National Curriculum for English states that, ‘Reading widely and often opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious minds.’ This is why our reading 'diet' at OTCA features breadth and depth through high quality texts. Becoming primary literate is also paramount to us for our children so that they step into their secondary school journey with confidence and advantage. The Reading curriculum is designed to be exciting and sequential, it is driven by high quality diverse texts through which knowledge, understanding and skills are progressively built. Meaningful links with other subjects are made to strengthen connections, enable a deeper understanding of vocabulary and allow opportunities for our pupils to transfer knowledge and language across curriculum areas, therefore enhancing communication, language and literacy across the curriculum. Our bespoke Reading curriculum consists of the following:
• word reading
• comprehension (both listening and reading).
• reading for Pleasure
Our carefully chosen literature spine from Nursery to Year 6 includes a range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. These culturally diverse texts and authors have been chosen to reflect the unique cultures and experiences that our children bring to OTCA. Alongside this, we recognise our children live within a community that may have limited experiences beyond the area they have been brought up in. Our experiences and trips, such as residential trips, trips to museums, Z-Arts and experiences brought to the school i.e. Zoo Lab are carefully planned across other subjects to support the background knowledge and vocabulary our children need to support their reading comprehension and vocabulary even though vocabulary and knowledge are both taught explicitly within our reading lessons.
By the end of KS1, our children will be successful, fluent decoders through the delivery of consistent high quality, systematic synthetic phonics teaching from EYFS until the end of KS1 (following the Phonics Bug scheme). Our pupils will understand that they use their phonics knowledge as the first strategy when tackling new words in reading and writing. They will also have a growing understanding of text meaning which will be further developed during Key Stage 2. As children successfully complete the phonics programme, from Year 2 upwards we teach whole class reading daily that is differentiated to meet the children’s needs. There is a clear emphasis on the skills and strategies our children need to become competent readers who can comprehend and manipulate the text in different ways.
Phonics curriculum whole school progression