Our Reading Intent
Our Reading Vision
At Osmaston CE (VC) Primary School, we believe that the teaching of reading takes children around the world, allowing them to access a full broad and balanced curriculum. It is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation; a vehicle that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to express themselves.
Our reading curriculum ensures pupils develop a lifelong love of reading for pleasure. We want to create reading behaviours so all pupils read frequently and widely; whilst questions, chllenging and debating what they read.
Our ambition is for every child at Osmaston CE (VC) Primary School to become a reader through a high-quality synthetic phonics curriculum; striving to ensure every child 'Keeps up' rather than 'Catch up' as early reading skills are taught. This is then supported through a linked approach to shared guided and whole class reading, home reading, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading and hearing quality texts read aloud every day. Combined, these strategies offer a variety of opportunities needed to develop fluent, enthusiastic and critical readers.
It is important that children are motivated to read at home regularly; when their reading opportunities increase, so does their fluency and stamina which in turn increases their enjoyment of reading. Our pupils are expected to read regularly throughout the week, at school as well as at home. Pupils will have access to a well-matched book that reflects their current phonetical and reading skill level, in addition to a 'Love for Reading Book' choice from the school's library.
Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are committed to promoting a love for reading and not only giving children opportunities to read in English lessons, but in the wider curriculum too. Reading is blended through and across the curriculum.
Our Reading Approach
Reading is something that we are very passionate about at Osmaston CofE (VC) Primary School. We see it as a window of opportunity into so many different worlds. We encourage all children to read aloud to an adult and to share books at home regularly.
Synthetic phonics is the process of sounding out the individual sounds in an unknown word and then blending these sounds together in order to read the word. The scheme teaches the sounds in an order which allows them to quickly begin to put sounds together to read words. For example, many words can be created from the letters SATPIN, whereas very few could be built using the initial letters of the alphabet ABCDE.
We start by teaching phonics in the first weeks of Reception and follow the accredited synthetic phonics approach: Jolly Phonics. For more information, please visit: https://www.jollylearning.co.uk/about-us/
Teachers carefully adapt their planning to meet the needs of the children within their class and individual assessments will inform the rate at which the children are able to progress through the stages; adapting the pace accordingly. We offer 'closing the gap interventions' immediately f required.
In June each year, children in Year 1 children take part in the national phonics screening check.
Reception Phonics
In the Reception Class, we will learn all 42 letter sounds and some alternatives. At this stage the children are also becoming more confident with segmenting and blending sounds to read whole words. Watch the video below to find out more.
In the Reception class, children are also taught words with 4 and 5 sounds in them and alternate ways to read and write different sounds. Assessments take place every 5 weeks to ensure pupils are retaining their learning and building fluency and automaticity (automatic reading skills) to ensure confident readers.
In addition, we offer Phonics into reading and Phonics into spelling daily.
Year 1 and Year 2 Phonics
The same approach as Reception continues into Year 1 and 2 to offer a consistent approach.
The children learn to read and write a range of graphemes and alternate graphemes. Alongside this the children are taught the ‘tricky words’ – common exception words daily which do not follow the regular phonetic pattern and are an exception to the phonetic code.
Discreet phonic sessions take place daily for 15 minutes.
Phonics and reading activities are taught in whole class and small group situations daily. Your children will work closely with children who are at the same phonic and/or reading level to ensure fluency and automaticity. This is so that the teaching can be focused on their needs.
In Key Stage 1 reading books link to the phonics children have learnt and provides children the opportunity to use the decoding and segmenting skills. Reading books are carefully checked to ensure they are phonetically decodable.
Year 3 to Year 6 Phonics
If pupils are not where we expect in reading, due to poor decoding or fluency, then the teaching of synthetic phonics continue. This approach ensures that the gaps pupils have in learning are rapidly closed to allow them to become confident, fluent readers to further develop their comprehension skills.
Each half term, the pupils' assessments will be used to plan the next steps in learning to ensure all pupils 'Keep up' and no pupils have to 'Catch up'
Finally, for children who are phonetically secure, from year 3 upwards we use Accelerated Reader (AR), which is a computer program that helps teachers manage and monitor children’s independent reading practice. Children join Accelerated Reader during Year 3, once they are ready and able to complete Star Reader quizzes independently.
All pupils pick books at their own levels and read them at their own pace. When finished, they take a short quiz on the computer. Passing the quiz is an indication they have understood what has been read. Staff are able to closely monitor this process to ensure all pupils are still reading regularly and with good understanding.