Respect – Resilience – Read – Retain
Respect – we aim to develop a sense of respect for themselves, peers, adults, other faiths and cultures, the environment and the wider world
Resilience – we aim to develop a ‘give it a go’ and ‘its ok to make mistakes’ attitude within our children to prepare them for life beyond school
Read – we believe that reading is the doorway to all learning, we will prioritise the teaching of reading in school
Retain – we aim for our children to know more and remember more, our curriculum design will reinforce and revisit skills and knowledge
Subject Lead - Mrs McWilliam
Intent
At St Teresa’s, we believe that reading is a key life skill that opens up a world of opportunity and therefore is central to all that we do. Our intention is to enable all children to become fluent, confident, lifelong readers and writers. The teaching of phonics, in a systematic way, is of the highest priority.
Implementation
At St Teresa’s, the discrimination of sound is taught to our youngest learners in Nursery, after which a systematic, synthetic phonics programme is taught on a daily basis from Reception Class until the end of KS1 (Y2). Beyond this, phonics is taught to those children who have been identified as still requiring support as they journey through KS2.
The teaching of phonics is progressive, but also allows the children to rehearse and review previous learning. This enables the children to know more and remember more.
Our chosen accredited phonics programme is Sounds-Write. This programme moves from the sounds in words to the written word – hence the title, Sounds-Write. To support pupils to be able to read and write with fluency and accuracy they need to have conceptual knowledge, code knowledge, and develop specific skills.
Conceptual Knowledge:
- Letters are symbols (spellings) that represent sounds.
- A sound may be spelled by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters. (Dog, street, night, dough).
- The same sound can be spelled in more than one way. (Rain, break, gate, stay).
- Many spellings can represent more than one sound. (Head, seat, break).
Skills:
- Blending – the ability to push sounds together to build words. (/k/ /a/ /t/ = cat)
- Segmenting – the ability to pull apart the individual sounds in words. (pig: /p/ /i/ /g/).
- Phoneme manipulation – the ability to insert sounds into and delete sounds out of words. (This skill is necessary to test out alternatives for the spellings that represent more than one sound) (spelling Is it /o/ as in hot, /oe/ as in no, /u/ as in son?)
The programme starts with what children acquire naturally, and from a very early age, the sounds of their own language. We teach that letters represent those sounds when we read and write. The programme is taught through specifically targeted units of work and within each lesson children will develop skills in reading and writing/spelling.
Alphabet Code – Initial and Extended:
Our youngest children in Nursery learn to discriminate sounds at every opportunity. In Reception Class, our children begin work on the Initial Code. Within this Code, they will learn to blend, segment and manipulate sounds in spellings. The children will then move on to the Extended Code. (One sound different spellings/One spelling different sounds).
Impact
By the time our children leave KS1, the majority of children will have passed their Phonics Screening Check and will be confident, fluent readers and writers. Journeying through KS2, they will develop the firm foundations in reading and writing and will be well placed to make good progress at Key Stage 3. Attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 1. This is repeated again in Y2 for those children who did not pass the screening check in Y1. (See example check).
Phonics Curriculum Documents
Supporting your child to read:
If you would like to help your child to read and write, why not register for an online course which is in two parts. The first part is free. If you are interested, click on the link below.
https://www.udemy.com/course/help-your-child-to-read-and-write/
Sounds-Write App:
This App has been specifically designed to work with an iPad. You will find lots of information about how your child is learning to read/spell and write. This app offers a variety of activities to develop the skills of blending and segmenting, sound spelling correspondence, word reading and writing and some sentences reading and writing. Visit the Sounds-Write website to learn more.