Teaching of Reading

...is deliberate and specific so children learn to read, and then read to learn

Phonics

At Woodlands, we know how important phonics is to ensuring we open doors for children, both academically and socially. Our phonics is structured, rigorous and systematic using the Read Write Inc programme. As soon as children start school, they start learning phonics, and our vision is to ensure every child can read by the end of Year 2.

Children learn in different groups according to their developmental need, and they are taught in a structured way to help them learn and remember a range of sounds. Teachers plan the lessons using a synthetic approach, teaching ‘pure sounds’ as well as segmenting and blending.

In the Early Years, phonics starts straight away. Children learn to listen and are introduced to a range of listening activities to help hear a range of different sounds. They then move onto grapheme-phoneme correspondence. We use a range of activities to do this, and the children are taught a range of ‘systems’ including ‘fred talk’ and ‘hold a sentence.’

 

Through Key Stage 1, children move through the different phases, learning all the sounds and tricky words. They continue to broaden their knowledge of sounds and application to words, finally moving into plenty of rehearsal.

 

At Woodlands, we don’t stop teaching phonics at a certain point – this is because we want children to be fluent to be able to read the most challenging of text. We recall all taught sounds right through to Year 6, and all children across school are deliberately exposed to phonics teaching weekly. In Key Stage 2, this does look a little different, and children develop an understanding of syllables for the spelling of multisyllabic words.

 

Where children need some time to remember their sounds, interventions happen across school. In phonics, this is the use of ‘pinny time’ and in Key Stage 2 we use a programme called ‘FreshStart.’

Reading

As well as the strong, deliberate focus on phonics, children also learn to read and comprehend through a range of reading strategies. Our teachers support the learning of fluency through a ‘fluency matrix,’ which teaches children the core features of fluency: prosody, accuracy and automaticity. We want children to read as much as they can, and so planned choral reading happens daily across reading sessions.

 

 

Story Time

And above all else, what our children love the most, is listening to stories. We plan and promote planned text throughout school so we can track which stories children are exposed to. We do this because we want children to listen to a wide range of texts and broaden their horizons of their choice of text. We also ensure that our book list discusses real life issues, and includes the teaching of the protected characteristics.