Phonics & Reading

Across the Trust, all pupils are encouraged to read widely including both fiction and non-fiction in order to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading,and to gain knowledge across the curriculum. Reading is taught through the English curriculum and reading within class will also be seen across all subject areas and include a wide variety of materials.  Reading skills are also taught explicitly through reading comprehension lessons.  Each class also enjoys a daily story time session with their teacher.  It is important for children to be read to daily and for our staff to model and share a story with a real focus on children being immersed in a range of different genres and authors.  

Each of the schools uses the Renaissance Star Reading Scheme which is a complete online assessment of students’ reading growth, allowing teachers to see which skills pupils have mastered aligned to the National Curriculum.  Pupils read books from the scheme and then complete an online assessment tool (in school) to establish comprehension of the book.  Children are encouraged to readat home daily, as part of their homework tasks, and take one book home for enjoyment and one from the REN scheme.  Each pupil has an individual reading record which is completed by parents and school staff. We also encourage our children to make recommendations to each other and be able to articulate their choices and preferences.      

The Read Write Inc. (RWInc) phonics programme is followed from Nursery, and throughout KS1.  It is an inclusive literacy programme for all children learning to read.  Children learn the 44 common sounds in the English language and how to blend them to read and spell.  The scheme helps all children learn to read fluently, and at a speed, so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spellings. The RWInc programme is also then used to support pupils in KS2, where needed.  The RWInc sessions are expected to occur each day with no exceptions, as the continuity and pace of the programme is key to accelerating the progress of children’s reading development.  Children are assessed during each session and a formal assessment is completed once per half term by the RWInc Coordinator.  This checks individual children’s ability to recognise and say each sound, to blend and to say real and nonsense (alien) words. RWInc groups can then be adjusted to ensure that children are at a similar stage.