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 aim to 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
World Book Day 2023
National Storytelling Week 2023
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 use reading skills and knowledge across the 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.
- To provide opportunities for children to enhance and learn new vocabulary.
- To ensure children working below age expected level in reading are targeted and intervention is implemented.
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 aim to 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 and segmenting skills for reading.
Opportunities for reading arise through our SSP scheme, in which whole class is encouraged throughout the lesson 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 twice a week and we aim to independently read with each child twice a term.
Story-time is an important part of the daily routine in EYFS and KS1. In Reception and Year 1, 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 cubes in a basket 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.
In EYFS children have access to a wide range of books and other reading materials such as magazines and leaflets in their dedicated cosy reading areas and in the outside reading area. 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.
The school ensures all independent and guided reading books are phonetically decodable and are accurately matched to pupil’s phonic ability. We use a range of books phonetically aligned with our Twinkl Phonics SSP scheme including Rhino Readers.
Key texts and books which have been selected to link with topic work are used termly and allow reading, writing and topic work to all be linked together and make learning more meaningful. Key texts for each term are identified on our Knowledge organisers, these also help inform parents on learning each term.
For assessment, 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 pupils.
Any children not making the expected progress have 1:1 or small group intervention using bespoke packages.
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 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.
Phonics is used in the early teaching of reading. Phonics is recommended as a first strategy to teach children who are learning to read and write. Phonics is used alongside other teaching strategies to help children gain essential reading skills and also foster a love of reading and books. 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.
Reading Books
Throughout Reception and Key Stage 1 children's reading books will be closely matched to their phonic knowledge in order for them to be able to sound words out and read independently. We expect that children will re-read books to aid confidence, fluency and comprehension. We have a range of books phonetically aligned with our Twinkl Phonics SSP scheme including Rhino Readers.
At some point in Year 1 or Year 2, your child will finish reading the phonically decodable books and 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.
Below are a selection of more websites which have useful information reading and helping your child to read.
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/preschool/Pages/Helping-Your-Child-Learn-to-Read.aspx
https://readingeggs.co.uk/articles/2018/09/16/teach-kids-to-read-at-home/
https://www.verywellfamily.com/how-do-children-learn-to-read-1449108
https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/why-is-reading-important-for-children/
Year 1 phonics screening check
Every year the children in year 1 will sit a Phonics screening check, this is used as a mid-point review to asses where the children are at. The test normally takes around 5-10 minutes and is done in a quite space and is one-to-one with an adult. The test consists of 40 words, 20 which are real words and 20 which are alien words (made up words containing the sound they have learnt). The PowerPoint bellows gives you some more information and details of the check and how you can support your child at home.