Reading and Phonics
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. At Springhill Primary Academy, we truly believe that reading provides a ticket to access an enriching curriculum and a bright and successful future.
Within the Reading National Curriculum there are two main foci; ‘decoding’ words and being able to comprehend and understand what is being read.
Phonics
Here at Springhill Primary Academy we use Read Write Inc. Phonics, a very popular and successful literacy programme to ensure that these two foci are being delivered securely from a very early age. This is delivered in Reception and Y1. This way of teaching phonics equips the children with the tools they need to decode texts.
At Springhill Primary Academy, a child will learn to read in a very simple way. He or she will learn to:
1. Read the letters by using their ‘sounds’
2. Blend these sounds into word
3. Read the words in a story
The sounds which provide the children with the tools to read are split into three groups:
1. Set 1 sounds are sounds written with one letter.
2. Set 2 sounds (ay, ee, igh, ow, oo, oo, ar, or, air, ir, ou, oy)
3. Set 3 sounds (ea, oi, a-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, aw, are, ur, er, ow, ai, oa, ew, ire, ear, ure)
Your child will be taught to say the sound for the letter and not the letter name to begin with. Some children will also benefit from our focused and targeted interventions to further support the development of their early reading.
The children are then able to use their learnt sounds to spell (encode) words and apply this to their writing. Often words and sentences are built phonetically by using the sounds they are familiar with in order to convey their meaning.
Useful Phonics Websites For Parents:
Reading
In Year 2 onwards, children are introduced to ‘Whole Class Reading sessions' The premise surrounding these sessions ensures that all children take part in a guided group led by a skilled practitioner and also that they are provided with an opportunity to apply their learning independently during a related task. Quite often, the Reading sessions are linked to the wider context of learning. Reading learning is linked to writing at all times as we believe that ‘reading is the breathing in and writing is the breathing out.' Our sessions are designed to maximise the opportunity for daily, weekly and monthly review to ensure new vocabulary, concepts and knowledge are encoded into long term memory.
The love of reading
As a school, we prioritise the love of reading for our pupils; our Literature Spine aims to expose our pupils to diverse texts and authors, based upon Doug Lemlov’s ‘Reading Reconsidered’. Pupils will be exposed to texts chosen to purposefully devise links between contextual background information needed to make connections in and across books, authors and genres. Alongside this spine, sits a bespoke exposure to books for pleasure from classical authors to the most recent shared in a love cultivated by both staff and pupils.
Celebrating the love of Reading
We do this by providing plenty of opportunities for children to engage with and reflect on a range of texts. This is done:
- within the classroom
- through visits to our impressive school library
- by inviting published authors in to interact with our children
- through text-led enriching ‘mini missions’ in line with our school’s pedagogical approach
- at least one whole school mini mission based on a rich and stimulating text
- celebrating World Book Day
- running school book fairs
- reading buddies
