Phonics and Reading

The National Curriculum

Reading - Oxford Reading Tree A reading programme that has taught millions of children to read. With systematic phonics at its heart, Oxford Reading Tree's well-loved characters, breadth and unrivalled support give children everything they need to become confident and motivated readers.

Phonics - Letters and Sounds Letters and Sounds is a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007. It aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills.

Our aim is to teach children to read effectively for both information and pleasure. We work hard to ensure reading is a pleasurable activity, resourcing our library, reading schemes and classroom book boxes carefully to encourage and enthuse all children. The children are given a Home and School Reading Record to share reading between home and school and encourage a partnership with parents.

We use a variety of approaches in the teaching of reading, including phonics, and ‘real’ books, taking into account a child’s individual needs. Phonics is taught in a tightly structured way from Reception using the Letters and Sounds Scheme together with Jolly Phonics. It is essential that all children learn the individual phonic sounds before learning to blend and segment in order to read words. We also use Mr Thorne’s phonic resource which is hugely popular with young children.

Our core scheme used is Oxford Reading Tree however this is supplemented with other reading schemes to provide a range to suit different reading interests. Reading begins with the use of picture books and develops through the use of a wide range of books, both fiction, poetry and non-fiction, to help children to develop their skills. This also includes the use of dictionaries, reference books and how to obtain information from books for topic work. The children are heard read on a 1:1 basis as well as weekly group reading sessions.