Reading and Phonics

How are Phonics and Reading taught?

Our curriculum promotes a love of reading through experiential opportunities and learning. A wide range of teaching resources and texts are available to engage readers. In our independent learning environment, pupils continually use their reading skills to research and apply knowledge into their writing.

In Early Years and Key Stage One phonic skills are developed through highly focused, daily sessions through the FFT ‘Success For All’ Programme. The school offers opportunities for parents to attend phonics workshops/sessions in order to further increase understanding of the strategies used in school.  

For support with phonics at home and for more information about the FFT Success For All Phonics Scheme, please use the following link where access to the Parent Portal can also be found: https://parents.fft.org.uk/

Reading Opportunities at Bredbury Green

Individual needs of pupils will always be taken into account. Some children will require individual or small group reading with an adult to support early skills e.g. decoding, blending. This will enable all children at Bredbury Green to become fluent, confident readers and thus develop a love of reading.

Reading books for children completing phonics are accessible in school and online at home: these are closely linked to their phonetic awareness. In school they are organised into a progressive colour banding levelling system and in the early stages these are matched to phonics phases. Once children have graduated from the phonics scheme, the children have access to a wide range of books including fiction, non-fiction and poetry from our reading reference areas. The system supports the independent choice, by pupils, of reading books. All pupils are expected to have a current reading book in school and are supported in choosing a text appropriate to their reading level. In addition, we encourage all children to borrow books from our reading reference areas in the classrooms and our library to further their reading at home. We have a well-stocked library at school, so children have the opportunity to access books during lessons to support learning and to borrow books to take home. All children are encouraged to take books home regularly and are able to change these as often as they wish. Book bags are provided for all children when they start school in Reception.

Pupils are actively involved in promoting the love of reading across our school. Events such as World Book Day are celebrated each year to promote reading across the school. Reading buddies from Upper KS2 are used to support the younger children with decoding and fluency skills. The older children are encouraged to communicate reading strategies to their younger peers such as finding cues and using phonic skills as well as engaging in conversation about the stories. This is a positive learning experience for all.

At Bredbury Green Primary School, English is taught cyclically, developing a clear sequence of learning. High quality texts (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) are selected and shared with our pupils, and used as the stimulus during 'reading weeks'. Next, 'grammar weeks' are planned for, where children develop their grammatical knowledge and then apply this knowledge to the context of the text that has been shared. Finally, 'writing weeks' provide the opportunity for our pupils to produce extended written outcomes, which are inspired by and/or born out of the high quality texts that have been shared. Writing happens across the curriculum, with both fiction and non-fiction and poetry pieces planned for. 

 

Prior learning and assessment of pupils is taken into account and informs future planning so gaps are addressed diagnostically.

Below is a representation of the teaching cycle for English, including reading:

Our Spelling System

Our children need to think about links between words that they know, not learn words in isolation. Their spelling knowledge needs to be grounded in phonics using the skills learned so well in KS1. Using and adapting Jane Considine’s system, Y6 conducted a Randomised Controlled Trial based on the question ‘Can the explicit teaching of spelling, using phonics strategies adapted from Jane Considine’s research, improve overall spelling scores?’ Quantitative and qualitative data was overwhelmingly positive so the system is now used across the school. Some elements can be seen in KS1 and the 5-day system for KS2 is shown below:

This system is reviewed by the English team on an annual basis as part of School Self Evaluation.