Reading at Arbouthorne Community Primary School
How Do Our Pupils Learn to Read?
Our approach to reading is developed through the following aspects
- Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) Little Wandle Letters and Sounds (Revised)
- Reading for pleasure and enjoyment
- Independent reading
- Shared reading
- Guided Reading
- Reading practise sessions
- Accelerated Reader for children who have passed their Phonics Screening Test
- Celebrating achievement and effort with books
- Author visits
- Online author chats
- Popular culture - choosing texts that children love for them to read
- Cutting Edge - finding out about up and coming children's authors to share with children
- Understanding barriers to learning and overcoming them
An ability to read phonetically and to secure a love of reading within a rich curriculum is a prime focus. Specific skills led learning takes place alongside targeted intervention.
Learning to Read
Phonics
A robust and consistent approach to phonics teaching through a systematic synthetic phonics programme, teaches children how to segment and blend words, recognise tricky words and apply taught skills. This allows children to independently read fully decodable text and for most children this starts within FS2. Children engage and develop rapidly with the programme. Some children need further support after each teaching session and we run targeted and comprehensive 'keep up' sessions.
Our literacy leaders and teachers support parents to understand how we teach reading and how they can support their child using the same strategies. We hold family sessions to support developing a love for reading and to help family members understand how we teach phonics and early reading and how best to help their child with their reading journey.
Alongside our synthetic phonics teaching, colleagues develop children’s love of reading through reading aloud and telling stories and singing songs and learning rhymes which develop children's engagement and auditory skills. Promoting reading and a love of literature from an early age is key from the start and continues throughout a child's journey with us. Our artist in residence spends time each week developing literacy and oracy through the creative arts and this also supports the rapid development of children’s vocabulary skills from wide ranging starting points alongside high quality class teaching. Ambition is high for all children.
We send home your child's phonically decodable book to read with you once they have shared this at least three times with the teacher in a small group, these books are also available on the Collins Hub for which your child has their own login. This supports children's fluency and application and secures the letters and sounds that have been taught. Children will also choose a book of interest which they can share with you. This may be from the classroom or our library and these are books you will read to your child whilst discussing the storyline, characters or content.
Blending and segmenting orally underpins successful phonetic decoding and encoding; pupils are taught to blend and segment, moving children from slow and analytical to fast and automatic.
Adults model saying phonemes so children hear a phoneme correctly and can segment and blend correctly. Adult talk is minimal during the review, practice and apply part of the session to ensure pupils work hard to independently read graphemes, segment and blend. We share the correct pronunciation of letters on your child’s Google classroom and have a number of guides to support you at home as your child learns to read.
Pupils are taught to blend across words for reading and to segment/write words for spelling in their daily phonics lessons, shared reading and writing sessions. It must always be remembered that phonics is the step up to word recognition. Automatic reading of all words – decodable and tricky – is the ultimate goal.
All pupils in Foundation Stage 2 and Year 1 take part in daily phonics teaching sessions. Children who did not achieve a 'pass' in the Y1 phonics screening check receive daily targeted phonics interventions.
Phonically decodable texts, aligned to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds (Revised 2021) programme, are used sequentially in the early stages of reading and for some learners beyond FS2 and Y1 as they continue learning to read in other year groups. Children’s progress through the phonically decodable texts is recorded on individual assessment records and tracked rigorously to ensure the teaching matches the specific needs of the child and the taught content of lessons.
Which graphemes do children learn when in Reception and Year 1?
Using high quality age appropriate texts in shared reading, teachers model: early concepts about print, word reading skills, reading behaviours and comprehension skills. Pupils are also taught to read in a focussed guided reading group.
Once pupils can decode...
Once children are secure with being able to automatically blend phase 5 sounds, they have the building blocks to be able to decode text. Children take part in weekly guided reading sessions. Children will continue to learn to read more complex texts with a focus on comprehension skills.
At this stage instruction begins to focus in greater depth on language comprehension processes, as vocabulary, complex sentence constructions and narrative structures place greater demands upon reading comprehension. Children not making expected progress participate in more frequent teacher led guided groups to accelerate progress.
Oracy
Speaking and listening skills are fostered, laying the foundations for successful learning of phonic knowledge and skills.
Blending and segmenting orally underpins successful phonetic decoding and encoding; pupils are taught to blend and segment, moving children from slow and analytical to fast and automatic.
Adults model saying phonemes so children hear a phoneme correctly, can segment and blend correctly, but adult talk is minimal during the review, practice and apply part of the session to ensure pupils work hard to independently read graphemes, segment and blend.
Children also engage with teaching strategies such as 'Story Dreaming', 'Talk for Writing', and the four oracy strands championed by 'Voice 21'.
What do we mean by 'Reading for Pleasure'?
Children in every class have timetabled opportunities to read for pleasure in school. We enjoy finding newly published books that interest and motivate our children, keep abreast with the latest quality literature and generate a culture of joy in exploring new and classic literature, comics, publications, e-books (through our Accelerated Reader programme) and our children keep colleagues at the cutting edge of popular culture!
Reading for pleasure:
- At its core is the reader's volition, their agency and desire to read, and anticipation of the satisfaction gained through the experience and/ or afterwards in interaction with others.
- It is or can be transformational (Cremin et al 2014:5)
- It can involve any type of text: novel, comic, magazine, non-fiction text,
- It can be on or offline and includes reading aloud or being read to
- It can take place anywhere: at home, school, on a bus, in a park,
- It can be solitary and social and interactive
Colleagues use children’s voice frequently to engage with current interests, opinions and habits around reading which impacts positively on the book stock available to pupils, the discussions that take place around reading for pleasure and the engagement of families in their child’s reading habits. We take part in reading books from various categories of Sheffield Children's Book Awards and voting for our favourites. We love to watch the awards ceremony each year in Sheffield Theatres and regularly take our pupils to the local library.
Power of Reading
We are a Power of Reading School and draw upon the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) resources and training which ensures we have the latest literature in the classroom. High quality texts are shared with the children and promoted throughout school, so that children engage with excellent books. Click here for CLPE website
