Rowledge C of E Primary School

How we teach our children to read and develop a love of reading, at Rowledge:

In our school, we continually review our reading scheme, and are continuing to develop our phonics books to match children’s needs.

We recognise that children need synthetic phonics books to practise sounds taught in lessons, alongside a wider breadth of genres and book types to ensure variety and continued enthusiasm. Some children also need specific sight reading techniques. In all cases, we develop a love of reading and ensure that children become motivated readers.

We have reviewed several types of phonics books and are increasing our Dandelion and Usbourne book, as we believe that they promote success for our children. We have completed an audit in order to carefully consider our options. Parent feedback so far is positive.

We work with each child, on an individual basis, matching their books to their level and interests. Some children start with books with no words to develop their understanding of books first. We ensure that additional support is put in place if they have any phonics gaps or reading difficulties.

We use precision teaching, paired reading, reading with the dog, daily reading with adults, ‘Teach your monster to read’ and ‘Read Theory’ and ‘Nessy’ for further intervention and reinforcement. Children use coloured overlays to help them when appropriate and specific reading books are available (Barrington Stoke) for those with barriers to reading.

Our homework focus is reading.

We follow the Time for Phonics programme as the basis for our phonics teaching, which we adapt to meet each child’s needs, with the addition of 'Teach your monster to read', Phonics Play and other resources. We have created our own phonics channel to ensure that parents know how to say the sounds correctly. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGFFV9MUSbQwnWTAO3YFmrw

Further up the school we continue to teach reading by ensuring that it is purposeful, whilst also encouraging reading for pleasure. Teachers read books to find the right match for children in their class, particularly when children are not yet enthusiastic about reading. Key Stage 2 classes have class readers, where children are asked to read bits at home in preparation for sharing their thought in school and reading confidently to others.

Literacy planning includes specific reading foci and a wide variety of quality texts are chosen, also using Text Drivers (Hampshire resource). Teachers take time to model reading and compare texts, including on-line text types i.e. twitter, web pages etc. Teachers focus

on vocabulary development, and use talking and drama, to increase engagement. Reading comprehension tasks and guided reading sessions are weaved through the curriculum.

Time is dedicated to extended, quiet reading and ensuring that books are meeting children’s needs. Children given opportunities to build stamina and resilience in their reading.

Book lists are made available to parents via our website, and sent out at various points during the year to continue to encourage parents to support their children in choosing quality texts.

Books and stories are used widely in assemblies and our children look forward to these.

We have identified our lowest 20% of readers and have interventions in place for them.

We track our children who do not pass their phonics test in Year 1 and can see their progress with the measures in place. In Key Stage 2 we have eight children who didn’t pass their phonics in Year 1. Of those, seven are on track (with interventions in place) to reach the expected level of reading in Year 6. The child who is not on track is awaiting an EHCP and we have a specific plan in place, with additional reading technology.