Reading and Phonics at the Federation
Reading
At the Federation we strive to promote a love of reading for all. All pupils are encouraged daily to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world around them. We support/guide children to foster a love of reading through reading high quality, age-appropriate texts that are linked to the curriculum, represent a range of diverse backgrounds/experiences and reflect children’s personal choice in what they read.
To further inspire a love of reading, children have access to our well-stocked library to take books home, engage in daily class story time, have regular opportunities to read for pleasure, classroom book corners containing carefully selected texts, and assemblies linked to current affairs and that celebrate children as readers. The love of reading also reaches out of the school in which children take home a mixture of books related to their phonetic knowledge and quality texts to share with an adult at home weekly.
Furthermore, children are explicitly taught to read through our whole class reading curriculum. Within the curriculum, children access quality first teaching, including the modelling of fluent reading with prosody and language-rich discussions which are also modelled by the teacher. Children are taught comprehension skills simultaneously, so they are able to access a range of skills to understand what they read.
Through all of this, the children gain knowledge across the curriculum, become inquisitive readers and develop comprehension skills. By the end of a child’s education with us, it is our intention for them to read fluently, with expression and confidence while enjoying reading for pleasure, before they move into secondary education.
Phonics
Debbie Hepplewhite’s Phonics International is our chosen systematic synthetic phonics programme which starts in Reception. In Nursery, Debbie Hepplewhite’s ‘Teeny Reading Seeds’ programme is used. These early phonics resources give the children an initial exposure to the alphabet letters and their sounds. They have fun exploring letters and their sounds in a playful and meaningful way and focus on developing the hand strength, coordination and correct pencil grip for writing.
The basis of Phonics International, which is a fully resourced programme, is to teach the letter sound correspondence knowledge of the English Alphabetic Code. This code knowledge is used to apply the three skills of: blending for reading (synthesising); segmenting for spelling; handwriting the letter shapes correctly. In the programme, the learners gain an enriched vocabulary and develop their comprehension in the process of learning to read, spell and write in the English language.
Progression is evident in the pupils’ home/ school folders, through the classroom displays and the content of the teaching. We follow the rigorous application of the teaching and learning cycle using cumulative code, words, sentences, texts and reading books to apply the skills learnt. Guided reading takes place daily in KS1, providing groups of children with the opportunity to practice their comprehension and reading skills in a supportive, teacher led session. In Year 2 the phonics programme continues with a greater focus on spelling patterns whilst still reinforcing and embedding phonic knowledge and skills.
