Phonics and Reading Scheme
Our Phonics and Reading Scheme
The school aims to develop literate pupils who:
- Read with confidence, fluency and understanding, orchestrating a range of independent strategies to self-monitor and correct
- Understand the sound and spelling system and use this to read accurately
- Have an interest in a wide range of texts and read for enjoyment and information
- Have an interest in words and their meaning
- Understand a range of text types and genres
- Evaluate and justify their preferences
- Develop powers of imagination, inventiveness and critical awareness.
The school teaches reading through a combination of approaches:
- Whole class shared reading.
- Listening to books together.
- Guided reading in groups with the teacher.
- Supported reading in groups with TAs.
- Independent reading at school and at home.
- Introducing the work of different authors as role models.
Early Reading and Phonics Intent
At Little Leigh Primary School, we are passionate about ensuring all pupils develop the skills to become confident, enthusiastic and passionate readers and writers. We believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding of the world around them. Every child will experience a rich reading environment, which is underpinned by quality first teaching of phonics; providing the foundations to support the development of reading and writing across the curriculum. Our Phonics approach is carefully sequenced to allow children to build the skills to segment, blend and decode words in order to become fluent readers. These skills enable the pupils at Little Leigh to develop a passion towards reading, understand and read a variety of texts, acquire new knowledge and become lifelong readers.
Early Reading and Phonics Implementation
At Little Leigh Primary School, we endeavour to foster a love of reading from an early age. We ensure that reading is at the heart of the curriculum from Reception through to Year 6, allowing every child to access a variety of reading experiences including whole class shared reading, individual reading and class story times. Beginning in Reception, the children are immersed in a variety of texts across the curriculum, which supports their understanding of culture, vocabulary and knowledge of the world.
Phonics is taught daily in EYFS and KS1 through carefully planned and sequenced lessons. Previously learnt phonics knowledge is revisited throughout KS2. At Little Leigh Primary school, we follow the Letters and Sounds programme that is enhanced with quality first teaching. Each lesson begins with a review of the children’s prior knowledge in phonics, which is followed by the teaching of new sounds and an opportunity for the children to practise and then apply their learning. Our phonics lessons are fast paced, interactive and challenging to ensure effective learning and progress is made.
The children’s phonics learning is linked to the books they read. Each child’s reading level is closely aligned to the phonics phase they are focusing on. The effective teaching of phonics supports children to recognise common exception words and segment and blend different sounds when reading unfamiliar words, enabling them to become fluent readers. The children’s fluency helps them gain a comprehensive understanding of a variety of texts within their shared reading and individual reading sessions.
At Little Leigh Primary School, we embed the children’s phonics learning across the curriculum by providing opportunities for the children to practise previously taught phonemes and graphemes in their writing.
In Reception and Year 1, our continuous provision and classroom environment reflects the children’s learning in phonics. Allowing every child to practise and access reading challenges throughout the day. Teachers also regularly assess the pupil’s phonics understanding. These assessments inform future planning and allows teachers to identify any gaps in learning.
Our phonics provision equips the children with a secure skill set, which we believe enables them to become confident readers, writers and spellers.
Reading Scheme
Across Reception and KS1, we use Collins Big Cat phonic texts to support reading and phonic development.
For individual reading and reading at home, we use the Collins Big Cat scheme from stages 1 to 9. This is complemented by a quality text by an author suitable for their stage of reading development..
In KS2 we have a wide selection of texts used for whole class reading sessions. Teachers also use a wide range of resources, such as excerpts from websites or newspaper excerpts from publishers such as ‘First News’.
