Reading
English Curriculum
In English we value the role of high quality, engaging texts to inspire and motivate our children. This underpins our English curriculum.
Reading at St Andrew’s
At St. Andrew’s we use the phonic scheme ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends‘ to support the teaching of reading through a programme of systematic, synthetic phonic approach ranging from the simple to the complex spellings of the alphabetic code. click here to learn more. Supported by their Supersonic Phonic friends, this approach ensures children develop confidence and apply each skill to their own reading and writing. We use the Big Cat Phonics reading books to enhance the reading opportunities for our children to become fluent. Once the children are fluent they have a range of books that include Oxford Reading Tree and Project X.
https://www.supersonicphonicfriends.co.uk/
At St Andrew’s we approach the teaching and learning of reading through a programme of systematic synthetic phonics, guided reading and by providing pupils with books to take home and practice with.
Below is a resource to help you support your children with their phonics. Please scan each of the sounds you want to practise and it will take you to a list of real and nonsense words to practise reading with that sound.
In our Early Years the phonic programme ‘Supersonic Phonic Friends‘ supports our early years children learn initial sounds. It aims to build children’s speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.
There are six overlapping phases. The table below is a summary based on the guidance.
| Phase One(Nursery/ Reception) | Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environmental sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting. |
| Phase Two (Reception) | Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound for each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple captions. |
| Phase Three (Reception) | The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the “simple code”, i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language. |
| Phase Four (Beginning of year 1) | No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase. Children learn to blend and segment longer words with adjacent consonants, e.g. swim, clap, jump. |
| Phase Five (Throughout Year 1) | Now we move on to the “complex code”. Children learn more graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know. |
| Phase Six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond) | Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc. |
At St. Andrew’s we aim to have all our children as fluent readers by the end of KS1 so that decoding does not hinder their enjoyment of reading as they progress through the school. We provide an environment that encourages a love for reading. We take a rigorous approach to phonics teaching following Letters and Sounds ensuring through the planning and delivery that phonics sessions are lively, interactive and investigative. All phonics sessions are carried out daily and are made up of 4 parts including; Revisit, Teach, Practice and Apply.
In Nursery, children access differentiated phase one teaching through short guided groups daily and the learning environment provision. All staff working in Nursery model how to segment and blend words regularly and have a secure knowledge of the Letters and Sounds programme through CPD.
In Reception, phonics is taught in 20 minute sessions daily. All children are taught phase 2 and 3 by the end of the year so they are ready for phase 4 in Year 1.
In Years 1 and 2, children are taught phases 4, 5 and 6. Children are assessed and monitored regularly and children not working at age related expectations are given phonics intervention daily. Those children who do not pass the phonics screening in year 1 are also provided with additional daily phonics invention to revisit past phrases and revise the current one.
Key Stage 2:
In Year 3, children who still require phonics teaching or did not pass the phonics screening resit, will be given regular intervention a minimum of 3 times weekly, which will include; phonics, ditties, tricky words and common exception words.
Reading within Key Stage Two follows on and builds upon the foundations set within Key Stage One. Books are banded into colour bands with a range of books in each band. Children have a choice of real books carefully selected for content with a range of fiction and non- fiction titles. Or they can choose a book from one of two schemes – Oxford Reading Tree or Project X. Oxford Reading Tree has the same familiar characters as the books in Key Stage One whereas the Project X books have cartoon graphics and a set of characters that are designed to reflect the children who are reading them.
Children are encouraged from Year 3 to Year 6 to select their own take home books from their colour band. Once children have confidently moved through all the bands they progress onto library books and are similarly encouraged to select their own books to take home and read. These books have a more challenging content for the children and extend their learning further.
Here at St Andrew’s we ensure that reading is an integral part of the curriculum in all subjects. We have a range of fiction and non-fiction books.