Reading and phonics

Reading and phonics statement

Intent

At Sea View Primary we aim to develop the full potential of all of our pupils as confident, literate readers and writers. We aim to teach the children to read fluently and accurately and develop skills which promote understanding and interpretation of texts to support the curriculum. We use a wide range of material to promote home school reading. Reading is Reception and Year 1 is focused on the use of Read, Write Inc. ditties and books. Reading from Year 2-Year 6 is based around texts which support Accelerated reader. This enables children to read a wide range of both fiction and non-fiction books which are appropriately matched to their chronological reading age and ability.

Reading Statement

At our school children will learn to read with confidence, fluency and understanding, providing them with the skills required to achieve a lifetime of enjoyment through reading.

Children read in school independently, in guided groups, with reading buddies, and as a shared class session. They listen to adults and other children read, taking part in paired reading with their own and other age groups.

Our Reading Aims 

• To develop phonetic skills which lead to blending and reading accurately and fluently.
• To promote confidence and positive attitudes to reading through access to a wide range of literature.
• To develop their vocabulary and comprehension of what they have read.
• To encourage good home/school partnerships.
• To enable children to analyse what they read and to participate in discussion and debate about texts.
• To monitor each child’s progress through the use of a range of assessment strategies e.g. Reading Age tests, on-going reading observations, monitoring against end of year assessment criteria
• To support those children who require additional support with their reading.

Reading in School

Many activities take place which promote pre-reading skills. Children become aware of print in their environment and match pictures and words. Language comprehension is developed by talking and reading to the children. As children gain phonic knowledge they start the process of decoding.

Initially, as children learn to read, they are given a picture book with no words with the intention that they will share the book and take part in a conversation generated by the pictures. Gradually as the children’s knowledge of letters and sounds develop they begin to phonetically decode words.

When children have a reading age of over six they can access Accelerated reader. The children complete a Star reader test which assesses children’s understanding of the texts through providing a range of questions based on reading, language and vocabulary. The test is completed on a tablet or computer. The data from this test is then used to signpost children to texts which are banded through the AR system. This ensures children are reading books which are appropriate and suitably challenging. After each book the child completes a quiz to test their understanding of the text. The children completed the Star reader test half termly which updates their data and identifies areas for further support. This data is used in class so teachers can have personalised discussions based on their quizzing, enabling teachers to support the bespoke needs of each child.

Developing Reading for Pleasure

To encourage children to read widely our English curriculum is based around a text to captivate pupil’s interests and motivate and inspire children to read a variety of authors and for a variety of purposes. Each class chooses a selection of age appropriate books by a variety of authors which are studied by children over the course of the year.

We try to encourage a love of reading by holding book themed days and events both as individual classes and across the whole school. eg Reading Challenges, World Book Day and Buddy Reading .

Meet Eddie English

Eddie is part of our Curriculum Crew who is introduced at the start of each Literacy  lesson, providing a visual link to lessons and allows our children to focus on the skills needed in the upcoming tasks.

Eddie is featured in our Reading Knowledge Organisers - allowing the children to revisit and consolidate prior learning as well as acquiring new skills.

Implementation

Pre-reading and writing

In Nursery and Reception it is important to allow children to explore a wide range of texts, they need to recognise print, understand print conveys meaning and have experience of a wide range of stories and rhymes. This forms part of child initiated activities and adult directed tasks. We are using Launchpad for literacy to support this in Early years.

When children in Reception are ready they begin the Read, Write Inc. phonics and reading programme.

Phonics Statement

Our school uses Read, Write Inc. for the systematic teaching of phonics. Daily sessions are taught in Reception and Key Stage One classes. Each session gives an opportunity for children to revisit their prior learning, be taught new skills and practise and apply what they have learned.

The principles of Read, Write Inc. Phonics

This is a full teaching programme proven to develop

• Confident speakers,
• Fluent and enthusiastic readers,
• Keen writers

Children are taught to

• Learn to read and write letter sound correspondences quickly
• Decode effortlessly
• Spell and handwrite easily
• Read with fluency and expression
• Comprehend what they read
• Write confidently using oral rehearsal
• Work effectively with a partner to articulate their learning at every step.

All Reception and Key Stage One staff have been trained to deliver this synthetic phonic programme.

As part of this programme the children are screened regularly to analyse their strengths and areas for further development. This allows staff to group children across classes to ensure all children are accessing the correct support.

 Intervention and Support

Any pupil who is not making expected progress receives additional support and intervention through Read, Write Inc. one to one sessions or bespoke intervention to suit the individual’s needs.

Impact

Tracking and Assessment

During daily sessions of phonics there are opportunities for practitioners to regularly assess children’s understanding of letter-sound correspondences. Outside the discrete daily phonics sessions there are opportunities to observe the application of phonics skills e.g. during guided/shared reading. During each Read, Write Inc. Phase there are judgements to determine if a child is secure at each level.

At Sea View Primary we use the Read, Write Inc. tracking sheet to track pupils and monitor the progress they make. Any pupil who needs additional support can therefore be quickly identified and appropriate intervention and support is allocated.

Year One Screening Check

Every Year one child in Summer term will take a phonics screening check. In this test the children are expected to read 40 decodable words including some nonsense words. This progress check identifies children who may need additional support in their reading. The results are reported to parents and are published in Raise Online. Any child who does not achieve the pass mark in this test will be retested in Year Two.

Assessment of Reading

Reading is assessed regularly and monitored on the school tracking system. External tests for Key Stage One and Two are completed in Summer term and reported to parents and in Raise Online. Children from Year One also complete termly written reading tests.

 In KS2, optional SAT reading tests are also used to monitor progress. Liaison with the school SENCO and external agencies is arranged for children who require additional support and reading intervention strategies.S

2023-2024

Nursery

 We use Launch Pad for Literacy from Nursery, so that children have the best start to the early reading and literacy journey. The skills based approach identifies what children can do and their development areas, which sets next steps for communication and language development.
This is not an intervention based approach and is not an ‘off the shelf’ intervention, but an approach which through assessment, provides practitioners with the knowledge they need to weave specific skills development into quality first teaching.

Phonological Awareness

• Rhythm and syllable
• Auditory blending
• Segmentation
• Blending
• Alliteration
• Phoneme identification

Speech

• Speech sounds

Auditory

• Auditory attention
• Auditory discrimination
• Auditory memory
• Sequential Auditory memory

Visual

• Visual attention and discrimination
• Visual memory

We love sharing stories

Reception

Now that we have learnt set 1 sounds we are learning to segment and blend words to begin to read. Children are eager to receive either a blending book, a ditty a day, or a red reading book. 

We enjoy discussing what is happening in each short story and learning to answer questions to demonstrate our understanding.

Visiting the Library

In Reception, we have enjoyed a visit to our amazing school library. With our friends, we explored the wide range of books. We are learning to hold the book the correct way up and turn the pages one at a time. With a partner, we chose a story book and enjoyed looking at the pictures in the books and talking about what we could see was happening in the pictures, before our teacher's read us some familiar stories altogether, where we could join in with repeated refrains. We already can't wait for the next visit!

Year 1

Wild

We have been reading our class story Wild.

We have made predictions and inferences based on what we have read.

In this lesson, we acted out parts of the story and used freeze frames to find out how the characters were feeling and what they were thinking.

We have perfect reading partners in year 1! We listen carefully to our friends reading and help each other with tricky words!

We love spending time in our reading cove. We have an exciting range of books to choose from and we like to choose a reading buddy to share our books with. We also have a story telling table with props on to help us retell some of our favourite stories. 

Year 2

We have been using our Read, Write Inc. books during reading sessions to embed or phonics learning.  We take turns in pairs to practice our speed sounds, Fred Talk our story words and then read our red words by sight.  We then share the story and work towards fluent reading before working on our comprehension.

Year 3

Year 4

Sam Wu Is NOT Afraid of Ghosts!

The brilliantly funny and first book in the SAM WU series, starring the bravest scaredy-cat in the world! 

Sam Wu is NOT a scaredy-cat (except he is). When a trip to the Space Museum goes terrifyingly wrong, Sam begins a mission to prove to the school bully, and all of his friends, that he is a fearless space adventurer.

This term Year 4 are reading, "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" by Kate DiCamillo. It is a beautiful book about love. Edward, the main character - a stuffed bunny, goes on an incredible world-crossing journey when he is separated from his owner. Throughout his many struggles, he finds out what it means to truly love somebody.

Year 5

The Highland Falcon Thief.

by MG Leonard & Sam Sedgman

Harrison Beck and his Uncle Nat are enjoying the final journey of the Highland Falcon, Britain's most famous steam train. But when a precious jewel goes missing, Harrison and his new friend Lenny find themselves at the centre of the investigation.

Can they solve the mystery and catch the culprit before they reach the end of the line?

Inspired by the novel we have used our skills of inference and deduction to write character descriptions.

We then created a crime scene in which we chose our three prime suspects based on identifying their motive, analysing their personalities and how tight their alibi was. We are determined to catch the Magpie thief before Hal and Lenny!

The Night Bus Hero

by Onjali Q Rauf

What does it take to turn a bully into a hero? Empathy and the power of forgiveness take centre stage in this poignant novel by the award-winning author of The Boy at the Back of the Class. Getting in trouble is what Hector does best. He knows that not much is expected of him...

Exploring the front cover and blurb we used our skills of inference and deduction to answer the questions : I see, I know, I Wonder. Based on our analysis we made predictions about what the book was going to be about...

After reading the first few chapters we used evidence from the story so far to imagine, draw and describe what we thought the main character of Hector looked like.

Using evidence from the story so far we also explored why people describe Hector as a menace and wonder if he will ever change.

Year 6

This term Year 6 are reading Holes by Louis Sachar. Stanley Yelnats' family has a history of bad luck, so when a miscarriage of justice sends him to Camp Green Lake Juvenile Detention Centre (which isn't green and doesn't have a lake) he is not surprised. Every day he and the other inmates are told to dig a hole, five foot wide by five foot deep, reporting anything they find. Why? The evil warden claims that it's character building, but this is a lie. It's up to Stanley to dig up the truth.

2022-2023

Nursery

Reception

We love to practise our blending.

In Reception, we have enjoyed visiting the library and reading some storybooks. We showed an understanding of pictures and print and enjoyed telling a story to our friends. 

We are learning our Set 1 sounds and we practise throughout the day. We enjoy being the teacher and asking our friends the sounds on the cards. 

Year One

We love to read in Year 1!

We love to read in our reading corner and to share stories as a class! This term we have enjoyed reading The Rainbow Fish.

We read RWI books, working together to decode words and challenge each other with red words. We discuss the book and complete comprehension questions.

Year Two

There is no dragon in this story!

The children who have now completed the Read, Write Inc. phonics reading scheme are now reading quality texts carefully selected to help broaden their reading experience.  We have been exploring this story for a half term and thought about the links we can make with other texts we already know.  We have developed our inference and deduction skills and worked on our expression when reading aloud.  

Year Three

In Year 3, we began the year by exploring the story ‘Halibut Jackson’.  We thought about all of the thoughts and emotions of the main character and compared those to that of the other characters in the story.  We wrote responses to an invitation and reasons for and against going to the party,  thinking carefully about how Halibut is feeling in the story and using this to link to inform our ideas.

We have now moved onto Alien Invasion by Micheal Morpurgo.  We are beginning to explore the characters from the story and unpicking the language to discuss the information certain word choices gives us about what is happening.  

Year Four

Non-Fiction

We read a range of non-fiction texts linked to our Natural Disasters topic and the King's Coronation. We explored how non-fiction texts are presented in different ways for different purposes. We used a range of reading skills and made inferences based on the texts.

We have been studying "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" during our reading skills lessons. We have used our skills of: fact retrieval, prediction, inference and analysing language to answer a range of questions about the novel. 

Year Five

Letters from The Lighthouse.

By Emma Carroll.

Stepping back in time back to The Blitz, we are loving our new novel. So far we have survived a Luftwaffe attack and been evacuated to Budmouth Point. Take a look at our work inspired by the novel so far.

The Explorer

by

Katherine Rundell

We are loving our exciting new novel, "The Explorer". Finding ourselves lost in the Amazon we have used descriptions from the text to design a raft to help Fred, Con, Lila and Max to return safely Home.

The Night Bus Hero

by Onjali Q Rauf

What does it take to turn a bully into a hero? Empathy and the power of forgiveness take center stage in this poignant novel by the award-winning author of The Boy at the Back of the Class.Getting in trouble is what Hector does best. He knows that not much is expected of him. ...

This half term we have been exploring empathy and debating whether Thomas, the trolley man should forgive Hector for his actions.

Year 5 - Reading For Pleasure.

Year 5 like to dive into a book and escape to other worlds and go on amazing adventures. Some of our favourites authors include: J K Rowling, Mark Walden, David Walliams, Roald Dahl , Jeff Kinney and Michael Murpurgo.

Exploring the front cover and blurb we used our skills of inference and deduction to answer the questions : I see, I know, I Wonder. Based on our analysis we made predictions about what the book was going to be about...

After reading the first few chapters we used evidence from the story so far to imagine, draw and describe what we thought the main character of Hector looked like.

Year Six

Wonder- R.J.Palacio 

During the summer term, Year 6 are enjoying reading Wonder about a boy called August who is starting school for the very first time. We have discussed how August is unique and how he must be feeling. 

The Boy at the Back of the Class 

When a new boy joins their class, a group of children try to befriend him. They soon learn that Ahmet is a refugee and has been separated from his family. None of the grown-ups seem to be able to help him, so the friends come up with a daring plan, embarking on an extraordinary adventure. Take a look at our reading responses based on the chapters we have read so far...

Chapters 9-14

Chapters 1-2

So far we have enjoyed reading the first 6 chapters of the book. In our Reading Skills lesson we answered a range of inference, word meaning and prediction questions. 

We created a balanced argument looking at both for and against whether Stanley should go in search for Zero. We used the book to search for evidence to back up our reasons. 

2021-2022

Nursery

In Early Years at Sea View, we understand the importance of pre-reading skills and how they support reading readiness for school.

We practise a variety of skills including rhythm and syllables, auditory blending, segmentation, rhyming, identifying phonemes and speech sounds.

We use the Launchpad for literacy skills framework to support progression of skills and BLAST as an intervention tool.

Reception

Year One

We have just finished reading some non-fiction books in Year 1. When we read, we always practice some 'Red Words', which are very tricky, then we do 'Hold a sentence', where we try our best to use 'Fred Talk' to help us spell words we have just read. Finally, we do a comprehension about the book we have read.

Year Two

Read, Write Inc.

We have been working hard to learn and use our phonics sounds in our reading sessions.  We have made lots of progress through the progressive scheme and have developed our fluency and pace.

Roald Dahl

Many of us have now completed the Read, Write Inc. reading scheme and are ready to explore the world of children's authors.  We have explored some of Dahl's classics, such as Fantastic Mr Fox, and are making links between his stories, characters and events.  Take a look at our lovely reading...

Year Three

Reading for pleasure, reading for life!
We enjoy a wide variety of texts in Year 3. Some of our favourites have been ‘Let it go’, lyrics from a Frozen song, Esio Trot by Roald Dahl, Robin Hood and There’s a Rang-tan in my Bedroom which started life as an Iceland advertisement!  We also enjoy using Reading Plus to support our learning as well as using the beautiful books we have in our school. 
 

Year Five

"The Explorer"

By Katherine Rundell.

This term we have been lost in the Amazon with our exciting new novel, "The Explorer" by Katherine Rundell. Through this thrilling adventure we have developed our skills of inference and deduction, developed a sense of empathy with the characters, expressed our own points of views as well as unpicking the linguistic features of the text. We can't wait to read what happens next.

In the style of Katherine Rundell we wrote our own version of the chapter entitled "The Ruined City". Here is Thomas reading his own stunning composition...

Year Six

The Boy at the Back of the Class

Our class novel for this term was 'The Boy at the Back of the Class,' which is about a young refugee boy named Ahmet, who has recently moved to the United Kingdom from Syria. Unfortunately, he has not received a warm welcome from some staff, parents and children. As part of our Reading Skills sessions we used our skills of inference and deduction to analyse different chapters as well as making our own predictions. Take a look at some of our fabulous written responses.