Phonics and Reading
Intent:
To ensure every child has the opportunity to build their confidence, enjoyment and ability in Reading and Phonics.
What is Reading?
Reading isn’t just about decoding words and developing fluency. It begins with the fundamentals of knowing how to hold a book and turn the pages, reading from left to right and top to bottom, knowing the difference between pictures and text and understanding that print carries meaning. Reading also involves interpreting visual cues, understanding and acquiring new vocabulary, making predictions and inferences. Learning to read is also about ‘listening’ to how someone reads because the use of expression and varying intonation is what helps to make reading an enjoyable and pleasurable experience.
Implementation:
Phonics:
Halcyon Way follows the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme.
Phonics is used as the prime approach across Halcyon Way, however we do recognise that some children learn to read more efficiently through a ‘sight word’ approach. Therefore, the ‘See and Learn Programme’ may also be used where more appropriate.
Teaching Reading:
‘Reading aloud fosters positive attitudes, enhances pupils’ motivation to read, and develops vocabulary and other knowledge, including of books, authors and genres that they might not choose to read for themselves. It also contributes indirectly to their fluency, as they listen to an accomplished reader bring a text to life.’
DfE The Reading Framework
Reading practise:
All children working at Flightpath 2 and above will read individually to a staff member three times a week. The sessions will develop a child’s decoding skills and will enable them to become more fluent readers.
Reading for pleasure:
Relevant Reading takes place every day and is an opportunity to promote a love of reading in all our children. The children will access a range of activities that have been matched to their flightpath/learning need including rhymes and songs, sharing picture books or sharing a chapter from a novel.
Impact:
The successful approach to the teaching of Reading and Phonics at Halcyon Way, will result in children who know the mechanics of reading, for example which way to hold a book and which direction to read the text in. They will have the ability to read a variety of words, using their phonics skills of segmenting and blending and they will have the confidence to answer questions about the texts they have read. Ultimately the children will have developed a love and enjoyment for the life-long skill of reading!