Clowne Infant & Nursery School
‘We take our children on a journey of discovery, giving them aspirations and engaging them in lifelong learning’
Welcome
Reading
Reading at Clowne Infant and Nursery School
At Clowne Infant and Nursery School, we will foster a love for reading and encourage our children to read for pleasure. Reading for pleasure opens up new worlds for children. It gives them the opportunity to use their imagination to explore new ideas, visit new places and meet new characters.
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.”— Dr. Seuss.
Supporting documents
Intent: What are we trying to achieve?
- To ensure the teaching of synthetic phonics is systematic and progressive throughout Foundation stage and Key Stage one to support phonetic knowledge and understanding.
- To ensure that children have secure phonetic knowledge, understanding and skills so that they can decode words confidently and apply this when reading.
- To enable children to apply their phonic knowledge in their reading and writing across the whole curriculum.
- To encourage our children to read for enjoyment and recognise that this starts with the foundations of acquiring letter sounds, segmenting and blending skills.
- To provide our children with opportunities to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live.
- For our children to develop a love of reading and enjoy reading for pleasure across a range of genres.
- To provide a language-rich environment to support and develop children’s language development and vocabulary.
- To develop our children’s ability to understand and use a variety of grammatical structures.
- To ensure children working below age expected level in reading are targeted and intervention is implemented.
- To ensure our Nursery provision enables all children to develop the key skills required for reading – both decoding and comprehension.
Implementation: How will we achieve this?
At Clowne Infant and Nursery School, we deliver Phonics through the Twinkl Phonics Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) Programme. We deliver coherently planned sequenced lessons that supports the effective teaching of phonics within EYFS and KS1. Throughout the levels, children will develop and apply blending skills for reading.
Numerous opportunities for reading arise through our SSP scheme, the whole class is encouraged throughout the lesson to apply their phonetical knowledge to read and weekly reading mini-books are provided to give children the opportunity to develop their reading skills by applying the new sounds (phonemes/graphemes*) or spelling rules they have learnt from the PowerPoints that week. For each week, there is an additional reading book available with a different storyline. This can be used for further reading practice of the sounds taught, if needed. In addition to this, children also participate in guided reading sessions twice a week and we aim to independently read with each child twice a term.
Phonetically decodable reading books (Rhino Readers) are matched to the children’s phonic level. We use these books as both individual and guided reading books to teach reading alongside phonics. We also give our children phonics-based activities to take home at the appropriate level, these include parent information sheets which are sent home weekly. This helps to consolidate what has been taught in school and encourages a cohesive whole-school approach to Phonics and Early Reading. Reading record diaries are provided to every child in FS2 and KS1, these are a great way for teachers and parents to keep track of pupils’ progress and achievements in reading. Teachers check reading record diaries weekly prior to changing their reading book.
Story-time is an important part of the daily routine in EYFS and KS1. In Reception and KS1, children are encouraged to vote for the story that will be read at the end of the day – each day they are presented with a choice of two books and they use mathematical resources to vote for their favourite. In addition to this, each class has an allocated time slot in which they can explore our school library, exchange books and listen to and read stories. Every half term, children in KS1 are paired up with children in EYFS as reading buddies and spend time discussing their books and reading aloud to each other.
In EYFS children have access to a wide range of books and other reading materials in their dedicated cosy reading areas. However, they are also available in all learning areas and are linked to the area or the topic for the week/half term.
All classrooms have their own class reading corners with a range of reading and topic themed books. These books include key texts and enhancement texts that have been chosen to promote a love for reading and link to the wider curriculum areas in each year group. Phonics working walls provide visual stimulus for children to refer to during and beyond the daily Phonics learning. The working walls help children to foster independence, provide previous learnt graphemes and ‘tricky words’ and display weekly key learning to support with reading and spelling.
Our Literacy lessons are based around two key texts per term. These texts have been chosen from the Literacy Tree Scheme of work and cover a wide range of writing genres.
Our key texts are shared with parents each term on our termly curriculum plans, these are sent home with the children and are also uploaded onto the school website. In addition to this, a whole school yearly overview reading spine is also available on the school website to inform parents of key texts, enrichment texts, key songs and key poems for each term throughout the year. A Phonics/Reading workshop is provided in the Autumn term for parents in FS2, Year 1 and
Year 2, these workshops give the parents an insight into how phonics and reading is taught in our school, how they can support their child at home and give them the opportunity to ask any further questions.
WellComm intervention program is delivered throughout school from EYFS to support speech and language skills and develop the language and grammar they use and understand and support is provided by SALT where necessary.
The use of Phonics Tracker and Eazmag in our school allows our staff to track pupil’s progress, to provide opportunities for data analysis and encourages discussions around pupil progress, group progress, future learning and misconceptions, enabling us to respond and adapt teaching to provide additional support and challenge to our children. Children identified as needing additional support will receive this through a carefully planned intervention timetable.
Impact: What difference will this make?
- Children will make progress through reading in line with year group expectations and make progress from their own individual starting points.
- Children will show progression through their contributions in lessons and termly reading assessments.
- Children will become confident and resilient in tackling unfamiliar words by applying learnt knowledge and skills to segment, blend and read words which are real and nonsense. In turn children in Y1 will sit the Phonics Screening check with confidence.
- Children in Y1 will sit the Phonics Screening Check in the summer term. Children who do not pass the Phonics Screening Check in Y1, will re-sit this in Y2. Phonics screening check data will show impact.
- Children will have an increased fluency when reading due to phonetically decodable books matching their phonics ability and through recognition of tricky words and high frequency words.
- Children will be able to discuss new vocabulary learnt through topic related texts and books.
- Children with SEND will develop phonic and early reading skills and knowledge and they will develop their ability to apply this across the curriculum which will help to prepare them for the next stage in their education.
We Love To Read!
Story Time at Clowne
At the end of the day classes take part in story time. During this time the class teacher or teaching assistant reads a book to the children or, children are given time to enjoy their own books whilst adults circulate to hear children read.
Our story time books are sometimes chosen by the children in the class; if they like a particular author or they have seen a book/ heard an extract and would quite like to read it. Our Enrichment texts are carefully selected books that are chosen by the teachers, these books are linked to curriculum topics and also include books they would like the children to try e.g. by a certain author or genre. The books may also be linked to previous authors or books the class have read.
Each class have a voting station in which the children are given the choice to vote which book they would like to read each day.
We are also proud to share with the children our newly refurbished school Library. Each class has a timetabled slot in the Library across the week so that each day a group of children from Nursery to Year 2 can explore, enjoy and choose a library book that they would like to take home!
In England, the national curriculum requires maintained schools to teach reading using systematic phonics. At Clowne Infant and Nursery School we deliver Phonics through the Twinkl Phonics Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) Programme.
Reading is the key to further learning across the whole curriculum and is a lifelong skill and so it is important that we teach phonics in a clear and systematic progression.
If you would like to know more about phonics in our school please see our curriculum Phonics page which explains phonics in more depth.
Home Reading
All pupils across school have two reading books which go home. The first is a phonetically decodable reading book (Rhino Reader) that is matched to the pupil’s phonic level and aims to build reading confidence and develop reading skills. The second is a free choice library book chosen for enjoyment. This may be a book that they will share with an adult at home, or read alone.
We also give our pupil's phonics-based activities to take home at the appropriate level, these include parent information sheets which are sent home weekly. This helps to consolidate what has been taught in school and encourages a cohesive whole-school approach to Phonics and Early Reading. Reading record diaries are provided to every child in FS2 and KS1, these are a great way for teachers and parents to keep track of pupils’ progress and achievements in reading. Teachers check reading record diaries weekly prior to changing their reading book.
When pupil's have completed and are secure in Level 6, they will become an independent reader; reading fluently and confidently and enjoying a wide range of books.
Reading with your child at home is one of the most important things you can do to support your child's learning. Also, reading to your child every day is just as important as hearing your child read to you. Reading to your child will help your child to develop their understanding of what they hear. It can also inspire them to want to read for themselves. Try to read to your child at a higher level than they can read by themselves and remember to talk about new words you come across together.
How to encourage and help your child to read at home.
- Make your child a member of your local library to broaden and expand their reading experiences. Let them choose their own books and go with what they are interested in reading.
- Help your child to find reading material they are interested in. Comics, non-fiction, fiction, poetry, magazines or leaflets is all good reading. Home reading is not limited to reading books that children bring home from school, all reading is good.
- Re-read familiar books and poems that have already been read again and again. This helps children gain fluency, confidence and understanding by over learning their reading. Children also love listening to familiar stories being read to them again which helps them establish knowledge of language and story patterns.
- Children love joining in with rhyme and repetition or repeated language when reading so introduce some books with rhymes and poetry so children see reading as fun and this helps them remember words too.
- Choose a time for your child to read to you when they want to read and are not too tired. If your child is refusing to read leave it until another time when they seem more eager to read and read a book to them instead to show that reading is a positive and enjoyable thing to do.
- Read a bedtime story to your child most nights or as often as you can, even if it is for just 15 minutes. Children will enjoy spending precious time with you sharing a story book and it helps children settle down into a calm, quiet bedtime routine ready for sleep.
Reading Rewards
To encourage children to read regularly at home we have a reward system linked to home reading. We ask our parents/ carers to read with their child at least 3 times per week. Children's reading records are checked every Friday. If children have managed to log 3 or more reads that week they are able to colour in a section of their Reading Rainbow. For each completed colour of the rainbow the children earn a reward.
We are also super excited to now have our new book vending machine up and running which has been kindly stocked and filled with books for all ages by our lovely PTA!
The children are able to earn gold coins as rewards and are able to choose a book of their choice to take home to keep!
