Greenfield Primary School
Reading and Phonics
Our new library - October 2024
Progression Ladders for EYFS, KS1 and KS2
Reading – Intent, Implementation & Impact
Intent
Reading is a key life skill and at Greenfield Primary School we are dedicated to enabling our children to become successful lifelong readers who can access literature in many forms. We recognise that mastery in phonics is fundamental to children being able to access a broad range of fiction and non-fiction texts across the curriculum. We aim to achieve this through focused, systematic teaching of synthetic phonics. It is essential to us that the children’s experience of reading and literature is positive throughout the school. We strive to enrich their relationship with books and create happy and positive associations around reading for the children to take on into the next stage of the lives. We are committed to having a wealth of quality texts in the classrooms and library for children to read and enjoy at school and borrow to take home in addition to the reading scheme books. As well as reading in their English and Whole Class Reading sessions, children often read a core text related to the wider curriculum theme. This ensures that the children continue to have exposure to high quality texts that can inform their learning in the foundation subjects. The school also has a bank of high-quality non-fiction texts that can be accessed during curriculum lessons.
At Christmas, school buys a book for each child to promote a love of reading. These books are chosen for each child by school staff and in some classes, children pick their own. Through the year we have fun reading focused days (Roald Dahl Day - September 2019, Roald Dahl Day September 2022 and World Book Day March 2022). During World Book Day week in 2022 we had a virtual book fair to running with a company called Books for Bugs where every book cost £2.50 with free postage to school. This generated funds to get new books. Our next virtual book fair with Books for Bugs is in November 2022.
Implementation
The synthetic phonics program we follow is ‘Read Write Inc’ from nursery to Year 2. Nursery children work through the Phonics Phase One programme. They learn crucial pre-reading skills of rhyming alliteration and oral segmenting and blending.
Nursery
The nursery children are read to every day and build up knowledge of a wide range of books including fiction and non-fiction. They read key texts during the year that develop their pre-reading skills. The children borrow books from the class library to share with their parents at home.
Reception
Expectations for RWI progression by year group
Set 1 sounds – sounds written with one letter and ‘Special friends’ sounds written with 2 letters. The children learn to identify these sounds and form the corresponding grapheme correctly. The children learn to segment and blend words containing these sounds.
Some children will take home ‘Sound blending books’ which contain words with sounds the children have learnt. Other children will progress to the graded ‘Book Bag Books’ which are stories containing the sounds the children are learning. - we have not got the sound blending books or the book bag books yet as we are using the£6000 funding which hasn't yet been approved (Jan 2022).
Set 2 sounds – Sounds with 2 (digraph) and 3 (trigraph) letters. The children learn to identify these sounds and form the corresponding grapheme correctly. The children learn to segment and blend words containing these sounds including alien words. ‘Book Bag Books’ pink and above contain set 2 sounds.
Some children will learn the set 3 sounds during their time in Reception. These are sounds with alternative graphemes to the ones in set 2 and some additional new sounds. In set 3 children are introduced to split digraphs. ‘Book Bag Books’ blue and above contain set 2 sounds. The children learn to identify these sounds and form the corresponding grapheme correctly. The children learn to segment and blend words containing these sounds including alien words.
Once children are familiar with all the set 1 sounds they begin guided reading sessions 5 times a week beginning with ‘Red Ditty Books’ and progressing to the graded Storybooks. Children in Reception begin learning some common exception words knows as, ‘Red words’ in the RWI scheme. These are words which they must learn and cannot segment.
Year 1
Expectations for RWI progression by year group
In Year 1 children begin by revising the Set 1 sounds including letter names and then move on to revising the set 2 sounds. The children learn to segment and blend words containing these sounds including alien words.
The children will take home graded ‘Book Bag Books’. Guided reading sessions will take place using the Read, Write, Inc graded Storybooks. The Set 3 sounds are then taught. The children learn to segment and blend words containing these sounds including alien words. The children will then be taught an additional set of sounds containing alternative sounds and graphemes which are not part of the RWI scheme but which are statutory and will prepare children for the Year 1 Phonics Screening in June.
Children in Year One will continue to learn common exception words knows as, ‘Red words’ in the RWI scheme. Pupils’ attention is drawn to the grapheme phoneme correspondences that do and do not fit in with what has been taught so far.
Year 2
Expectations for RWI progression by year group
In Year 2, the vast majority of children come in with secure phonics knowledge and are able to decode effectively to read words they have also learnt the ‘red’ words and can access age appropriate texts easily.
For those children who did not pass the phonics screening, and for those where the teacher’s believe it is necessary, supplementary phonics work is taught in small groups or 1:1. In general teaching of reading is completed in class based shared and guided reading (whole class and small groups) where children read together and discuss the text including authorial / editorial intention, implied meanings, retrieval of detail and layout.
Twice within a unit of work, approximately once a week, the children’s main activity will be comprehension focused and in many direct teaching sessions reading skills are utilised. Children take home reading books and are heard read regularly, depending on need.
Years 3-6
Children in these years continue to learn reading skills, as well as to reflect on and develop their own enjoyment of literature and personal preferences, as part of their English lessons and time in class. Classes have an ongoing class book, which is read to the children by the teacher and access to a well-stocked book corner. Children are able to request books they would like and teachers are able to order books suited to their topics / class needs through the year. We promote a love of reading through appealing reading areas within classrooms and we have a well stocked library which we restock with pupil request where possible. Children enjoy writing to authors after reading a class book and love getting replies. After reading Darwin's Dragon's by Lindsay Galvin, Year 6 were thrilled to get a reply.
As in year 2, comprehension based activities are taught within the English units are contextualised as much as possible. Comprehension activities take on may forms and are often collaborative and child led. Children are encouraged and enabled to form their own opinions on texts and to develop their own opinions and tastes and to share these with their peers. We also use the VIPERS model to teach whole class reading after lunchtime daily. In this session, the children unpick a text in detail focusing on the vocabulary, making inferences, predictions, explanations, retrieval and summarising.
All classes use quality texts in their English teaching to contextualise learning objectives and make the learning more interesting for the children (but not explicitly). Texts, taken from CLPE, are read in their entirety over the course of a unit. We avoid, as much as possible, teaching English based on extracts of texts unless this is beneficial because of the genre / context.
All classes have a book area that is well stocked and frequently replenished to ensure children have access to books other than those on Accelerated Reader / Read Write Inc for enjoyment and to stimulate a love of literature.
Read Write Inc book bag books sent home in Reception and Year 1 to consolidate and reinforce phonics learning and begin to develop comprehension skills.
Accelerated Reader texts are used to supplement reading and we use the books recommended by Read Write Inc as supplementary reading materials.
All children in all classes are listened to reading aloud by an adult with a particular focus on the bottom 20% and PP children at least once a week. Children are asked VIPERS style questions during their reading to check for understanding and in Y2 and Y6 adults give a signed and dated commentary where children have shown evidence of an assessment point being met.
In the EYFS and KS1, we have a dedicated teaching assistant who delivers daily 1:1 Read Write Inc sessions and Wellcomms for children falling behind national expectation. In addition, some children have been identified to receive tuition through the NTP and this is delivered over 15 hours after school by our own school staff to close gaps.
All children are able to take home school books to read at home and can borrow books from library and/or book area.
Every class are read class book that the teacher reads to the children to help foster love of literature in the children and also to expose children to a range of quality literature. These are generally of a slightly higher level than the texts the main cohort would be able to access on their own and age appropriate to the group.
Every half term, the children on Accelerated Reader do an assessment. These assessments are are used to inform planning and stimulate any additional learning required for the children (catch up or intensive programs etc).
Impact
The children enjoy stories, being read to and reading themselves – fostering a lifetime love of reading.
They develop and maintain enthusiasm and interest in books and reading and are familiar with a range of different genres and authors.
They have experience of reading non-fiction books for pleasure and for learning and can use them effectively.
They know how a library functions and treat the library, and class book corners, with respect.
The children can confidently decode and phonically sound out and blend words by the end of Year 1 with increasingly sophistication and fluency by the end of Year 2.
They develop inference and retrieval skills in their reading comprehension in increasing complexity as they go through school.
Children achieve expected or above expected standard in their reading assessments in Year 2 and Year 6 SATs.
Reading has a high priority across the school and emphasis is placed on reading in all year groups from Nursery to Year 6. Greenfield Primary School is committed to ensuring that all children become fluent readers by the age of seven. This is achieved by teaching reading through a systematic synthetic phonics programme, Read Write Inc, and by immersing children in a range of high quality texts.
Phonics
We have selected an ambitious program of systematic synthetic phonics for our school. Read Write Inc. is designed to expose children to a rich vocabulary and stimulate further understanding of the world around them as well as give all children, including those disadvantaged pupils and pupils with SEND, the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. It is used by more than a quarter of the UK's primary schools and is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers. We teach in this way because research shows that, when phonics is taught in a structured way – starting with the easiest sounds and progressing through to the most complex – it is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. According to the DfE (Department for Eduction), ‘almost all children who receive good teaching of phonics will learn the skills they need to tackle new words’. They can then go on to read any kind of text fluently and confidently, and to read for enjoyment. The scheme aims to place literature as a central pillar in establishing children’s identity, their place in the world and their understanding of their responsibilities and rights in relation to others which fits well alongside our own curriculum view to open up the world. It has a fast paced and thorough structure that enables children to systematically learn single letter sounds and allows for progression to more complex sounds. The ‘Scarborough Reading Rope Model’ suggests that word recognition strands such as phonological awareness, decoding, and recognition of sight words can only occur as the reader becomes accurate, fluent and increasingly automatic with repetition instruction and practice over time. Consequently, children begin their early reading journey as soon as they enter the EYFS.
Our yearly EYFS intake comes predominantly from our school nursery however we also receive children from other local private nurseries across the borough and therefore we receive children into the EYFS in all different stages of early reading. We use baseline assessments at the start of EYFS to determine which stage of early reading children are at. At KS1, children are assessed using the RWI assessments as early as possible. We use this assessment to inform planning, intervention and adapt and personalise learning for all children throughout EYFS and KS1. Children are grouped according to their phonetic ability and re-assessed once every half term to determine whether they are ready for more complex sounds. All children partake in daily phonics lessons - at least 20 minutes in EYFS up to 45 minutes in KS1 including reading. We ensure that group sizes are kept to a minimum to ensure that children are given the time they need to make good progress and for staff to have the most impact.
Daily phonics sessions are centred on the learning and embedding of new and previous sounds. They are taught how to recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes, identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as ‘sh’ or ‘oo’ and then blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word – known as ‘special friends’. Children can then use this knowledge to decode new words they hear or see. Children begin by being given access to a new sound and then embed this sound into green words (words which can be phonetically decoded) and alien words (phonetically decodable made up words). Children at this stage are also given access to red words and taught that not all words can be decoded. These words are taught alongside new sounds at each different set. Once the new sound has been taught, the new sounds is entered into the pack of existing sounds for children to recap and recognise, further embedding taught sounds. Once the sound has been embedded children move on to spelling words that include the daily sound.
Children learn to spell using sound buttons - a dot for a single phoneme and a dash for further graphemes or ‘special friends’. Children sound out the word repeatedly and then count the sounds using their ‘Fred fingers’. This allows children to identify how many sounds are in the word before writing in order to identify it themselves in their own spelling. Children write the word whilst saying the sounds out loud. This is then modelled and check by the leader of the session.
Children begin their RWI journey by learning the initial set 1 sounds in the EYFS. They then progress through set 2 and set 3 sounds at their own learning pace.
Children are given access to levelled reading books and documents to support their embedding of new and previous sounds as well as helping to form comprehension skills and further understanding of the text. They also take home the corresponding ‘book bag book’ fro practice and consolidation. Children who are working on set 1 sounds and are not yet ready for ditty books will work on RWI blending books. We aim for all children to read their phonetic reading levelled book at least 3 times before it is changed. Once with a TA, once with the class teacher and one independent read. The first time children read the book they are focused solely on reading the words correctly, making sure that words are sounded out accurately and that red/tricky words are identified. The second time children read the story they should read with significantly more fluency. This should enable children reading above a green levelled book to read without Fred talking out loud and instead employing the ‘Fred in your head’ technique. The third time a child reads their book it is intended to be read in their ‘story teller’ voice. This enables children to show their understanding of the story as well as making use of their comprehension and understanding skills to show that they have a good recognition of what is happening. Phonics is embedded across the curriculum and the children are encouraged to use phonics to support them in a range of topic work. Phonics is displayed in each classroom across the school, including the RWI sounds and tricky red words. The children are encouraged to use these to support their writing in all lessons across the curriculum.
The classroom culture during Read Write Inc sessions is engaging, positive and challenging as all children are encouraged to try their best. Staff deliver sessions consistency and with fidelity to the scheme. All children have high expectations of themselves with regards to presentation of their letters and sounds, with a strong emphasis placed on correct and consistent letter formation. This is reflected on daily, due to the high expectations set by all teachers. Children respond well to this as teachers have built good relationships with children in a safe and secure environment where learning can take place. Allocated training and resourcing time is given to staff during Monday assemblies to support provision.
Early reading is assessed through a system of cyclical benchmarking. This is the process in which we monitor and evaluate the phonics provision in school. It has the mechanisms to look at how well the intent is being delivered throughout all stages of early reading. It is given with respect and received with an understanding that it is developmental not judgmental. A variety of different benchmark actions such as pupil output, lesson study, planning, environment, data analysis etc. are used to gain a wide breadth of knowledge around the area of early reading so that decisions can be made of how to improve.
A log of staff CPD pertaining to the teaching of early reading is kept to allow subject leaders a clear awareness of those staff that require top up training. Trained staff also have access to weekly CPD with the early reading lead to talk through any ongoing assessments of children, to ask questions relating to teaching and learning and to share good practice. In order for our CPD to be successful it has a focus on improving and evaluating pupil outcomes, is underpinned by strong evidence and expertise, include collaboration of trained and untrained staff and must be sustainable over time. This is prioritized by school leaders. It is done with, not to, staff and has regular feedback built in. It is given with respect and received with an understanding that it is developmental not judgmental. A variety of different Benchmark actions such as pupil output, lesson study, planning, environment, data analysis etc. are used to gain a wide breadth of knowledge around the area of early reading so that decisions can be made of how to improve.
Additional Information
Home Reading We encourage you to read daily with your child at home with the minimum expectation being that your child’s reading record is signed three times a week. In the early stages of learning to read, your child will bring home a decodable book linked to their phonic knowledge. Once they are more fluent, they will move on to the Accelerated Reader program.
Accelerated Reader Accelerated Reader is a computer program that allows us to manage and monitor your child’s independent reading. Each pupil selects a book at their reading level and then completes an online quiz once they have finished reading it. These quizzes allow us to check that children understand what they have read. Through their participation in Accelerated Reader, pupils can build up points for a range of rewards.
Click this link to view a reading booklet which includes key information and is sent home for parents
The Reading Framework published July 2021 and our school summary.
Read Write Inc Information - use this link to find a wealth of information about how we use Read Write Inc put together by our RWI lead.
Stories in Thursday's weekly story assembly
Recommended Reading list by year group
All of these nursery books have pictures, which support the text but also compliment and add to it. It is important to discuss the pictures and what is happening in them as much as the text. After a while, the children will get to know each story word for word, which can give great confidence to early readers in terms of fluency when reading.
The books for the 4–5 age group build on the Nursery selection. They still mainly use patterned language, but begin to have a stronger emotional connection with the reader. There is also plenty to discuss and to wonder about. Many of them lend themselves to retelling and creating new versions or further adventures featuring the same characters.