Reading including Phonics • St Luke's C of E Primary School

Intent

We aim to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for reading by providing a curriculum which promotes high standards of language and literacy and equipping children with skills and techniques to develop their reading skills whilst also fostering a love of literature through reading for enjoyment and pleasure.

At St Luke’s, we aim to achieve this by using the Read, Write, Inc phonics programme delivered daily across KS1. Children will not only learn their sounds, but will also learn decoding skills which in turn will help to develop their fluency and accuracy in reading. Children will have access to a wide range of books, including their Read, Write, Inc books and ‘Love to read’ books

The aim of teaching Phonics at our school is:

To develop pupil’s love of reading by developing their reading skills which will give them the confidence to read a wide variety of literature that interests and excites them.
To develop the courage to solve problems by applying their decoding skills when coming across unfamiliar words and being able to use the context of a sentence to make sense of unknown words. This is done in an environment where children are encouraged to ‘have a go’ and know that mistakes can help them to learn and grow.
To give and instil hope that they have the skills to prepare them for developing their reading beyond KS1 and to foster a sense of confidence in their ability to read a range of texts across the whole curriculum

Implementation

At St Luke’s, the Early Years Framework and the National Curriculum is the core of our English curriculum. We use the Read, Write, Inc phonics program to develop the children’s knowledge and skills for reading.

Our curriculum is designed upon a base of skills and knowledge that we want the children to learn. This is mapped out across KS1 in a progressive manner. We plan the daily phonics sessions based on the Read, Write, Inc program

Every lesson will:

begin with a daily speed sounds session, whereby children will be learning a new focus sound or reviewing a previously taught sound and learning to recognise that sound within words..
Revise previously taught sounds by reading familiar words containing those sounds and building up their fluency by reading those words with increasing speed and accuracy
Encourage children to use the sounds within a context by spelling words containing the new and revised sounds
Contain a reading session where children are introduced to a new book and given the opportunity to practise reading the story words and red (tricky) words in order to successfully read the books. These reading sessions will also develop fluency skills by encouraging the children to re-read the book several times and comprehension skills by developing their questioning and inference skills.

Impact

We aim for all children to achieve age related expectations in Phonics at the end of KS1. In order to evaluate the level to which children are retaining knowledge and are able to apply their learning to a range of situations, we use a range of techniques.:

Regular assessment using the Read, Write Inc assessment guidance enabling children to be grouped accordingly and gaps in their knowledge to be identified.
Regular intervention for those children identified as having significant gaps in their skills and knowledge
Regular monitoring of Read, Write, Inc sessions to ensure consistency in the teaching of phonics
Afternoon phonics sessions taught in Year 1 to revisit the focus sound for the day and regular ‘pinny time’ in EYFS to help embed the sounds being taught.

Please see a video here on advise for hearing your child read https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/yoZo8ETg/DsfgsZAd