Reading at Frederick Bird

Teaching Early Reading – Phonics

In EYFS and KS1 we teach children the skill of decoding (word reading) using the Rocket Phonics scheme which offers a whole class fully synthetic approach, with language rich stories at its heart. This promotes our school intent to ensure that children access a range of books and also supports the development of vocabulary and comprehension skills.

Nursery

Develop knowledge and understanding of sounds, distinguish between sounds heard and begin to orally blend words.

Reception and Year 1

Learn new grapheme-phoneme correspondences and build knowledge of common exception words, as set out in the Rocket Phonics programme

Year 2

Children who do not meet the required standard at the end of Year 1 will continue to follow the Rocket Phonics programme.

Children working at age related expectations will focus on developing skills needed for reading fluency.

Development of Reading skills

As children progress, we develop fluency by exposing children to a range of reading material and use strategies such as frequent reading, partner reading and repeated reading. Comprehension skills are developed through questioning and strategies such as pre-teaching.

Through whole class reading, we provide access to high quality texts, with a focus on studying a whole text rather than extracts.

  • In Reception each class studies a book for half a term to develop an understanding of book talk and enrich vocabulary.
  • In KS1 and KS2 we use the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education’s (CLPE) Power of Reading teaching sequences to support the planning and delivering a series of high-quality reading lessons.

Home Reading

Children take home two types of books.

  • Levelled book that aligns with their reading ability. In Reception and KS1, they match to the sounds they have learnt in the phonics lessons.
  • Book to be read for pleasure. It can be shared with an adult as it may be too difficult for the child to read on their own. It may be a familiar story as their teacher has shared it in class.

Bug Club

  • All children have access an online platform that provides the opportunity to read e-Books.
  • Staff allocate books to children according to their reading ability.
  • Less confident readers can use the read aloud function to hear the story.
  • All children can use the inbuilt quizzes to assess their understanding of the text.

Intervention

  • Rapid Phonics intervention is delivered in KS2 to new users of English
  • Project X Code is delivered to newly arrived children in KS2
  • 1:1 intervention for SEND children in KS1 and KS2
  • PPG children are heard read 2/3 times weekly

Reading for Pleasure

  • We provide children with a wide variety of reading material through our three well stocked libraries.
  • Our Reading Champion supports staff and pupils with book recommendations.
  • On entry to school, children read and are heard by their class teacher.
  • Teachers ensure that they read aloud a shared text to children on a regular basis.
  • We participate in local and national book awards such as the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards and the UKLA Book Awards – for which several teachers have participated as judges.