Reading and Phonics
At Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and at St Joseph’s Schools we believe that being able to read and write are the vital skills that enable us to understand and express ourselves more effectively.
These skills open the door to learning. We passionately believe in helping children to develop not only the technical skills of reading and writing, but also in engendering a love for literature and the different genres of writing.
Phonics
Our teaching and support staff have been trained in the phonics programme ‘Sounds~Write’. Our teaching of reading and writing within the school is, therefore, based on the Sounds~Write programme. This begins very early on when children join in Reception and continues until a child is a confident and competent reader and speller. Sounds~Write is used around the world and is one of the DfE approved schemes.
The knowledge of sounds and symbols is an important starting point for understanding and using written language and we believe that a strong and consistent approach to the teaching of phonics is vital for our children to begin to access the rest of the curriculum. This is, however, used in conjunction with many other strategies to help children to begin to read and write.
Find out more about Sounds~Write here: Sounds~Write
While learning to read children are given fully decodable readers to build confidence and encourage a love of reading.
You can help your child with their phonics both in and out of school by attending our annual Parents Session on Phonics each Autumn and by completing the free online Sounds~Write for Parents Training Course. It only takes an hour but will give you an insight as to how to best help your child.
While learning to read children are given fully decodable readers to build confidence and encourage a love of reading.
Developing a Love of Reading
All our children have the opportunity to take home Reading for Pleasure books from starting school. Whilst our youngest children are learning to read for themselves, we expect that children have the book read to them and discussion takes place around the language used, the story itself, the setting, the pictures and such like. The main thing is that children enjoy listening and ‘reading’ the story together. Older children are encouraged to do a mix of reading for themselves and enjoying listening to it being read to them. Discussions should still take place to help children develop their vocabulary and linguistic understanding.
Each year group from year 2 has a Reading Spine comprising around seven books that every child is expected to read over the course of the academic year. As well as being carefully selected to be progressive across the school, the books cover a range of genres from a variety of authors. By providing this spine children are exposed to a wider selection of stories than they may naturally choose. From this spine children may be inspired to read wider around the author or genre and are encouraged to explore this when choosing their own Reading for Pleasure title.
Additionally, we employ Reading Plus as a powerful tool for monitoring and managing independent reading practice while promoting reading for pleasure. The children are offered a range of texts and their reading speed and accuracy is monitored and tracked. Using the system children’s reading fluency is increased and once again, children are exposed to a variety of genre and topics and understanding of vocabulary is focused upon.
Find out more about Reading Plus here.
Click here to log in to Reading Plus.
Our school codes are:
- OLQM – RPOURLA20
- STJ – RPSTJOS34
Writing
Writing is a complicated process drawing on skills and knowledge gained initially from reading and being read to. Handwriting, structure, grammar and punctuation each have an important part to play in helping children to become proficient writers. We draw these elements together and use the Literary Curriculum to help us deliver an enthralling, book-based approach to becoming writers.
