English and Literacy
Mrs Crosby is the English Coordinator at St. Patrick’s RC Primary School
Documents:
ST PATRICK'S WHOLE SCHOOL OVERVIEW OF TEXTS, PURPOSE, AUDIENCE, READING SPINES
Phonics and Early Reading
In EYFS and Key Stage 1, an understanding of phonics is taught through multisensory, engaging, discrete sessions. Phonics sessions are well matched to children’s needs and are taught using systematic synthetic phonics based on the progression of sounds outlined in the Red Rose Letters and Sounds scheme.
Our pupils benefit from:
- A daily phonics session, based on a model of review, introduction of new learning, practice and applying;
- Focused directed teaching involving oral and written practice of letters and sounds;
- A variety of teaching methods, including demonstration, modelling, games, singing and other practical activities.
- Repetition and teaching of ‘tricky’ words.
As our children move through the different phonic phases, they will be matched to a phonically decodable book at the appropriate level for the phase they are learning to take home and share with parents. This will give them further opportunities to practice the skills they are learning in school and reinforce their learning. Our phonically decodable books come from a wide variety of publishers and each book has been matched to the most appropriate phase. Children will also access the school library at least once a week, where they will have the opportunity to choose their own books to take home and read for pleasure with their families, helping them to develop a love for reading.
As the children move onto Phase 6 in phonics they broaden their reading with a range of colour banded books. These books have all been assessed by our staff and grouped into appropriate sets that creates a progression from the decodable phonics books right through to free choice reading. We have designed the system to help pupils develop their skills of blending sounds into words for reading and to help them establish the habit of applying this skill whenever they encounter new words. The colour banding system supports this practice, providing pupils with reading books that are consistent with their developing phonic knowledge and skill, and their knowledge of common exception words.
Children who find reading more difficult receive additional support targeted to their identified needs. This may be daily 1:1 reading with an adult, small group phonic interventions or a structured intervention such as fast track phonics. This may continue into Key Stage 2 where they also have access to a selection of Project X books; these are high interest/lower reading level books.
Reading for Pleasure
Reading for pleasure is a central part of our culture at St Patrick’s Primary School and we work hard to develop a love of reading amongst our pupils. Children have the opportunity to take part in engaging and enjoyable shared, group and independent reading activities through the daily English lesson and through Guided Reading sessions. During these sessions, which are led by well trained teachers and TAs, our pupils are always encouraged to read for pleasure.
We share a wide variety of diverse novels, picture books and poetry in our classes on a daily basis. Our pupils have access to a wide range of diverse, exciting, and inspiring texts through our well stocked library and class reading corners.
Our pupils are given the opportunity to develop decoding and literal comprehension skills before working on high order reading skills. During reading lessons, our skilled teachers nurture a love of reading while making rigorous and ongoing assessments of our pupils’ progress. Our staff are skilled at the early identification of at-risk children who struggle to develop early reading skills. At such times, additional support is put in place.
Parents are asked to read with their children multiple times a week and record their observations and comments in their child’s Reading Diary, provided by the school. This is monitored carefully by class teachers. Each class has its own system of changing books that will be set out at the beginning of each year. All our pupils will go home with at least one reading book each week and all children will have access to the school library at least once a week. This system ensures that our pupils are given regular practice and make rapid progress through the reading stages as well as developing a life-long love for reading.
Once pupils have progressed through the colour book bands they are able to move onto free choice. Teachers in year groups where this is happening, explicitly teach children how to choose engaging, age appropriate books and then pupils can choose to read books in the classroom, the school or local library, or from home.
Progression and Key Learning Documents at St Patricks
Early Years Literacy
It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading.
The videos below explain how we implement three areas of Literacy into our EYFS curriculum at St Patricks.
Speaking and Listening
Author Visits
Each term we have an author visit to raise the profile of reading, speaking and listening in our school. The children get inspired and love to listen and find out about the authors. It also inspires their writing! We have been lucky to have had visits/zooms with authors such as - eg. Tom Palmer, Keith Harrison, Olaf Falafel, Dan Worsley, Paul Jenkins and Emily Gale.
Current Reading Roundup Newsletter - Autumn 1 2024...
