Reading and phonics

What is phonics?
All words are made up of individual sounds. These sounds are merged together to form words. A grapheme is another name for the letters we use to write the sounds - the spelling of that sound on the page. Phonics is the method of teaching reading through the identification of sounds and graphemes. The National Curriculum requires that all children are taught phonics systematically, giving children to tools to read and write any word.

Early Reading

In Reception and Key Stage 1, we teach the children to read using the phonics programme ‘Read Write Inc’. Using this programme, we teach sounds and give opportunities for the children to practise reading and spelling words containing these sounds, then we give children decodable books containing sounds and words that they can read.

The children will read each storybook three times at school and then they will bring this book home to read with parents. On each read, the child’s fluency develops, allowing them to focus on other reading skills such as expression and comprehension. Children also learn to spell the words that they have been reading and develop their ideas into sentences so that they can write about the storybooks they read.

Stories are a key pillar of learning in Nursery, Reception and Year 1. Children enjoy getting to know a carefully selected range of high quality stories at school. Some are limited to learning across the curriculum and others are shared fir pure engagement, allowing even the youngest children at Stamford Green to know the delights of being ‘lost’ in a book.

For more information about Read Write Inc, please visit: https://www.ruthmiskin.com/parents/ 

Please see below for a copy of the presentation from our most recent parent workshop for YR and Y1 parents about early reading and for Frequently Asked Questions about Read Write Inc.

How we teach reading in KS2

For the children in Y2-Y6, we teach reading skills through the use of reading whole texts as a class. At the beginning of Y2 this begins with picture books and then progresses to longer fiction texts throughout the year. Through the use of reading a whole text, children are able to develop specific reading skills such as inference, prediction and understanding, whilst reading  engaging and exciting books, which develop a love of reading. We ensure that across the year groups, the children read a range of genres, by a variety of authors, covering a range of subjects and storylines.