Intent
At Mexborough St John, we aim to provide a high quality reading and phonics curriculum which will allow pupils to read fluently, with understanding and enjoyment so they are ready for the next stage of their education by the time they leave primary school.
Our curriculum is consistent throughout school, within phonic learning and early reading lessons included daily from FS1 through to those who need it in Year 6, in order for each child to reach their full potential and ensure than reading is as little a barrier to life and learning is possible. We promote a love and joy for reading, with each class being able to enjoy books daily in their classrooms either by listening to class texts or enjoying books from their classroom reading area.
Implementation
This policy promotes best practice and establishes consistency in Teaching and Learning across the whole school. It aims to ensure that all pupils are provided with high quality learning experiences to develop pupil’s life-long love of learning.
We follow Little Wandle: Letters and Sounds Revised from FS2 to Y1 daily and beyond for any child that needs it further up school. We teach daily phonics lessons to those accessing the scheme, where the children learn and embed graphemes to be able to read a wider variety of words and texts. During a lesson, children recap previously taught sounds and read words including these in order for them to become embedded as well as recapping tricky words. They then learn a new sound, read and spell single words including these as well as sentences. The order of which each sound and tricky word is taught can be found in the appendix.
Children get the opportunity to further practise their phonics skills in our ‘reading practise’ sessions which occur three times per week. These sessions are split into three key focuses:
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Day one – decoding. Children focus on segmenting and blending, applying their phonic knowledge and recognising tricky words.
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Day two – prosody. During this session, children re-read the text then practise using prosidy and expression in their voices to help them read like a reader! They learn how to choose words to emphasise when reading aloud and appropriate ways to use their voice to create an exciting read.
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Day three – comprehension. Once the children get to day three, their understanding is checked by being asked a range of questions about the text they have read. They practise information retrieval, inference, retelling and vocabulary skills to show a comprehensive understanding of what they have read.
After completing this book in school, the children then gain access to this book as an e-book which we encourage children to read at home successfully. As well as gaining access to an e-book, children also take home a ‘challenge book’ from the reading scheme; this is a book that they haven’t read yet, is linked as closely as possible to their phonic stage and is changed weekly.
Phonics is closely linked to other aspects of the curriculum, particularly in writing. Children gain the opportunity to apply their learning into written work and staff ensure that children are using the appropriate phonetic spelling in their writing as well as challenging the spellings of tricky words that they have learned so far.
Differentiation for vulnerable groups (SEND, Pupil Premium, etc.)
Children with SEND or other challenges to their learning, the pace that they move through the phonics scheme will be at their rate of learning. Children may access the scheme as a small group, during intervention ‘catch up’ sessions or through extra reading practise in order to close as many gaps as possible and create more confidence around reading abilities.
Impact
Impact in phonics is measured by half-termly assessments where gaps in learning are identified and plugged as appropriate through intervention, additional one to one reading practise and quality first teaching. As children progress, they will move through the reading scheme where the phonics will match the appropriate phase of phonics. This is closely monitored by class teachers to ensure children are reading at the correct level for them.
In Year One, all children sit the Phonics Screening Check to assess their application of GPCs in real and ‘alien’ words. Should they not pass, they will get the chance to retake this in Year Two.
Phonics and reading reviews take place regularly in order for leadership to observe lessons and impact across school. Following these observation, teachers and teaching assistants are given feedback in order to maximise learning further such as observing good practice around school or completing additional CPD in a supportive way in order to ensure that children are achieving their maximum potential.
Assessment for Learning (formative assessment) is recorded against statements from the reading national curriculum statements for each year group.
