Reading and Phonics

Reading and Phonics Vision Statement

In English lessons and across the wider curriculum, reading is key. We use exciting and relevant texts in a range of genres to enrich the children’s learning. It is the aim of every teacher at Baldwins Hill to ensure that their class develops a love of reading, writing and responding to texts, whilst raising standards for every pupil.

We passionately believe reading is the doorway to all learning. Therefore, we want to develop increasingly competent, confident readers who enjoy reading and progress quickly. This includes, but is not exclusively about, having met the Phonic Screening Check Standard in Y1. We want learners to have truly secured their phonics to ensure their fluency in decoding and prevent barriers to reading and writing as they move through our school and the rest of their life-long learning journey.

Read Write Inc. Phonics

To ensure fidelity, we follow Read Write Inc. to teach Phonics and early reading, with a clear progression of phonic knowledge and application. In these early stages of reading, books are carefully matched to a child’s phonic knowledge. Read Write Inc. is a Systematic Synthetic Phonics Programme designed to teach children how to read through the act of decoding and blending.

An SSP teaches children the link between the sounds of our language (phonemes) and the written representation of these sounds (graphemes), or the spellings of the sounds contained within the English language.

Information for parents

Understanding Phonics

What is Read Write Inc. Phonics?

How to say the sounds

Reading the bouncy sounds with your child

Reading the digraphs with your child

Reading the stretchy sounds with your class

Sound blending

10 things to think about when you read to your child

Why read to your child?

The Phonics Screening Check

Reading

From The National Curriculum

The programmes of study for reading at key stages 1 and 2 consist of two dimensions:

word reading
comprehension (both listening and reading).

It is essential that teaching focuses on developing pupils’ competence in both dimensions; different kinds of teaching are needed for each. Skilled word reading involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words. Underpinning both is the understanding that the letters on the page represent the sounds in spoken words. This is why phonics should be emphasised in the early teaching of reading to beginners (i.e. unskilled readers) when they start school.

Good comprehension draws from linguistic knowledge (in particular of vocabulary and grammar) and on knowledge of the world. Comprehension skills develop through pupils’ experience of high-quality discussion with the teacher, as well as from reading and discussing a range of stories, poems and non-fiction. All pupils must be encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, and to gain knowledge across the curriculum.

Reading widely and often increases pupils’ vocabulary because they encounter words they would rarely hear or use in everyday speech. Reading also feeds pupils’ imagination and opens up a treasure-house of wonder and joy for curious young minds.

It is essential that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to read fluently, and with confidence, in any subject in their forthcoming secondary education.’

Reading progression

THINGS THAT PARENTS CAN DO TO SUPPORT THEIR CHILD’S READING:

Sit with your child every night and engage with them in their reading. Please look at the teacher’s comments and make your own comments in the Homework Book.
Encourage your child to ‘sound-out’ unfamiliar words and blend the sounds together from left to right.
Discuss with your child what they have read in the book.
Ask them to retell the story.
Talk about any interesting words and their meanings, or any interesting phrases which your child may ‘borrow’ (magpie) and use in their own writing.
Visit the local library with your child.
Read to your child often.
Play the phonic games sent home from school.
Play word games like ‘I Spy.’

Baldwins Hill
Primary School

Reading and Phonics