READING IN KEY STAGE ONE AT SHORT WOOD

We know that the reading ability of our children has a huge impact on all areas of the curriculum. Teaching children to be proficient and fluent readers as well as developing a love of reading is one of our top priorities in school. We use a range of initiatives and interventions to support children across all of the key stages to ensure that every pupil will learn to read regardless of their background, needs or abilities.

At Short Wood we aim to …

• Enable all of our children to become successful and engaged readers
• Promote a love of reading across the school
• Deliver a comprehensive phonics curriculum where all children are taught to be fluent and confident readers
• Follow a whole school approach to reading which is embedded within the whole curriculum
• Use quick and effective interventions to ensure that all of our children become successful readers
• Develop the skills of the teaching staff so that the quality of the reading teaching in school is outstanding

TEACHING PHONICS IN KS1

Our children’s reading journey starts by following the Read Write Inc phonics scheme. This initiative promotes a strong and systematic emphasis on the teaching of phonics to aid the teaching and learning of reading. As part of this scheme our children are taught to:

• discriminate between the separate sounds in words;

• learn the letters and letter combinations most commonly used to spell sounds;

• read words by sounding out and blending their separate parts;

• study written representations of a sound and how it looks;

• recognise on sight vocabulary identified as ‘Red words’

• Read a range of high frequency words.

THE READING GEMS

From Year 1, the Reading Gems form the basis of the planning. The children have two adult led reading sessions a week. One covers the ‘Decode’ Gem where the children are reading phonetically decodable books following the RWI storybook sessions. The second session looks at one of the KS1 Reading Gems and is where one of the skills is explicitly taught. Throughout KS1 the children are taught reading within same ability groups for both the decoding and reading gem session. Children in Year 2 then go on to complete an independent activity covering the gem they have looked at during the week. During the remaining reading sessions, the children complete independent tasks based on their spelling and phonics learning.

Children have a special ‘Reading Pack’ that includes the Read Write Inc book they have been reading in school (their ‘Book to Read’ ) and a self chosen book band book (their ‘Book to Share’). These are sent home weekly so they can be re-read to develop confidence and fluency. We also encourage children to include school library books, First News newspapers and their own books from home as part of their ‘pack’.

Every child takes part in an exciting, interactive class story time where they are able to experience a range of well known and new stories.

WE LOVE READING AT SHORT WOOD

We know that reading is more than just the mechanics of learning to read and we want all of our Short Woodies to be readers for life.

There are lots of ways that we develop a love for reading for our children-

• Whole school reading themed topics such as the ‘Inside the Villains’ project
• School visits from authors and illustrators
• Putting amazing stories at the heart of our exciting curriculum
• Well stocked book areas in classrooms that contain a range of reading materials
• A ‘Book Buddy’ scheme whereby KS2 children share stories with younger readers.