Early Reading & Phonics
Intent
At Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, we recognise that reading is a key life skill and that the ability to read brings life-long pleasure. Reading is at the heart of everything we do. Our children have access to a wide range of high-quality genres and texts, promoting a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure. We aspire to instil in all children a love of reading that we hope will stay with them for life. We develop a love of reading alongside our phonics programme through poems, rhymes, stories and non-fiction texts. This ensures children are exposed to a breadth of vocabulary, language and comprehension skills.
The teaching of phonics and early reading throughout Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 via our early reading curriculum is of the highest priority. We aim to give children the best start on their reading journey by developing their phonological skills and knowledge needed in order to decode words independently. The Bug Club Phonics scheme allows children to secure each grapheme quickly, as we teach them the key phonological skills and knowledge needed in order to decode words independently. The more graphemes the children learn to read and write, the greater amount of words they will be able to read and spell.
Our ultimate goal is for every child to quickly become enthusiastic and motivated readers. We strive for each child to have the ability to recognise, blend and segment sounds, in order to read words, as well as reading sight words, in order to become confident, fluent readers and writers, who show a good understanding of what they have read. Fluency enables skilled reading and comprehension.
Implementation
At Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. We have chosen to use Bug Club Phonics Scheme, a comprehensive teaching programme and DFE approved systematic synthetic phonics scheme which has been found to be successful academically for children. This scheme has shown to increase positive attitudes to reading and be a great motivator for more reluctant readers, boosting children’s confidence and enjoyment of reading right at the beginning of their reading journey. The clear progression throughout the scheme ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
The Bug Club Phonics programme follows a similar teaching sequence to Letters and Sounds and lessons are structured in the same way each day with an introduction, revisit, teach, practise and apply element to every session (Please see our flow chart below for more information). The consistent, fun and engaging lessons support children to build confidence and provides them with routines they become familiar with.
Our Phonics Flow Chart outlines how daily phonics lessons are taught to ensure consistency across the year groups. Lesson are taught to the whole class, to ensure inclusive practice and to ensure all children have exposure to different phonemes/graphemes. We teach the phonics phases in the following way:
- Reception – Phases 1 - 4
- Year 1 – Phases 3 – 6
- Year 2 – Recapping Phases 5 – 6 & then moving to the 'No Nonsense Spelling' which focuses on the teaching and learning of spelling (patterns and rules, statutory words, common exception words)
We also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside the phonics lesson and across the curriculum.
Early Writing
In Reception, writing begins through mark-making. In support of the mark making, a large emphasis is focused on children's physical development within their fine and gross motor skills. This is supported through Dough Disco, Squiggle Whilst You Wiggle, cutting, building, using small construction equipment i.e. Lego, pegs, beads. Children are encouraged to mark make in all areas of learning with access to a wide variety of resources.
Drawing Club forms the basis of our Literacy lessons. Drawing Club incorporates story sharing, speaking and listening, drawing, writing, vocabulary, imagination, collaboration and mathematics. Please read the 'Early Literacy in EYFS' document below for more information.
early literacy in eyfs drawing club.pdf
Assessment
Teacher’s complete half-termly assessments and where assessments show that children need support to catch-up, they receive intervention sessions targeted to their specific needs and more frequent reading in the classroom. This may be done either one-one or small group support alongside these sessions.
Children in Year 1 sit the Statutory Phonics Screening Check. Any child who does not pass the check will receive additional support and will re-sit the test in Year 2.
Decodable Reading Books
Here at Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, we understand that allowing children the opportunity to frequently practise their segmenting and blending skills and to consolidate the learning from each phonics session is vital. Alongside our phonics teaching, two Bug Club phonics books are issued to the children each week. One of these is read 3 times a week during adult-led Guided Reading sessions in class. The second book is for children to take home and practise over the course of a week. We ask that children read these books at least 3 times to provide the opportunity to focus on decoding the book, focus on reading for speed and fluency and read for comprehension.
Reading daily with children is imperative in supporting children’s use and understanding of vocabulary. These books are fully decodable, which means that every word in the book can be read using just the children’s developing phonics knowledge. They are matched to the children’s phonic ability which allows children to embed and secure their phonic knowledge, and in turn allows them to build their confidence, motivation and enthusiasm for reading.
For children in Year 2 upwards, a whole-class guided reading approach to reading is followed, ensuring consistency in the teaching of reading skills throughout the school. Once children have become fluent readers in Year 2, they will move away from Bug Club books and will be encouraged to select a book of their own choosing, their 'Reading for Pleasure Book'.
At Burton Leonard, we aim to create a strong link with parents in order to facilitate and support children’s reading journey at home. We believe that children will experience the most success in reading when school and home work together. Watching both family members and teachers use reading and writing for everyday purposes supports children to develop an understanding on the importance of learning to read. Reading for pleasure, sharing stories at home or using a recipe also shows them that reading is a vital, useful skill.
Reading for Pleasure
We value reading for pleasure highly and want to support our children to develop a lifelong love of reading right from when they start with us in Reception. All children will experience:
- Being read to every day. We choose books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books. These books also reflect the interests of the children as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
- Having an inviting book corner in their classroom that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
- In Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their exploring learning time.
- Children from Reception onwards have a home reading record. Parents/carers record comments to share with the adults in school.
- Each class has access to the school library.
- Roll up and Read sessions. This is when parents/carers and invited into school to read with their child.
- Weekly recommended reading books by teachers
Impact
The impact of using Bug Club Phonics as a systematic synthetic phonics programme, along with the earliest possible introduction of decodable reading books, enables children at Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School to get off to the best possible start on their reading journey and develop the love for reading that every child should have. Children will make progress through the different phases of phonics and make progress from their own individual starting points. We strive for all children to become confident and fluent readers, demonstrating their ability to apply learnt knowledge and skills to segment, blend and read words. Children will demonstrate high levels of engagement in phonics and will quickly develop the necessary skills to see themselves as ‘readers’ and apply their knowledge when beginning to spell and write sentences. The impact of our phonics and reading curriculum is seen across all areas of the curriculum.
Basic Phonics Introduction Video for Parents and Carers
//www.youtube.com/embed/0dCRWLLNXPo#t=0.5
Below you will find links to useful documents. If you wish to speak to someone about phonics at Burton Leonard Church of England Primary School, please contact Miss Newell via the school office.