Reading and Phonics

Vision: intent, implementation & impact

At Rotherfield School, our intent is to develop the essential life skill of reading to enable our children to become lifelong readers. We aim to foster a love of reading and enrich children’s lives through high quality texts. By building confident readers we are offering opportunities to develop their expertise across the wider curriculum.

We will implement our vision through the use of rich quality texts that support and enhance children’s reading skills, growing vocabulary and knowledge and understanding of the world around them. This ensures that every child at Rotherfield will leave us as a successful reader we:

Use one synthetic phonics programme.

There is a robust and systematic structure in place across EYFS and KS1 through the Read Write Inc Programme. Children are taught to segment and blend to become successful fluent readers. The repetition of phonemes and graphemes and repeated reading of fully decodable books enable children to become confident readers. Comprehension is seen as an integral part of learning how to read.

Build on Reading Comprehension and responding to texts.

In addition to reading skills being developed in everyday English lessons, an hour a week is dedicated to whole class reading in Year 2 and beyond. Children are exposed to a range of text types including fictional genres, scientific writing, poetry, songs etc where they can apply the essential reading skills through discussion, collaborative work and independent thinking.

Read for enjoyment.

All children have access to the school library which holds a wide variety of text types and genres. Teachers spend time reading to the children every day to foster a love of reading and provide opportunities of shared reading experiences.

Read at Home

Reading at home is with the specific intent of supporting our reading fluency development in school. Children read regularly out loud to an adult at home and engage in choral reading and guided reading support from their parents or carers. More information about this, including demonstrative videos, is available below.

Ensure exposure to a wide variety of text types

Across their journey at Rotherfield, children are exposed to a wide variety of text types and genres to broaden their experiences of reading. The school reading spine is an integral part of planning for teachers so that texts are used in all areas of the curriculum. All children will have the opportunity to see themselves as the main protagonist within a text, view and understand lives that are different from our own and to walk into a story and enter worlds that have been created by authors.

The impact of the vision will be:

Enthusiasm about reading and seeking a wide range of texts types and genres.
Ability to decode words confidently and develop a growing understanding of what they read.
Parents and the wider school community will be actively involved in their child's reading journey.
Understanding and appreciation of the wider world around them that supports the schools focus on diversity.
Progress between Key Stage 1 and 2 to be at least in line with the national average.

Reading and Phonics

At Rotherfield Primary School, we use Read Write Inc (RWI) as our primary reading scheme.

In Reception and Year 1 the children follow the RWI Speedy Sounds phonics scheme. From year 2 onwards we use the No Nonsense spelling scheme. Each class has 20 minutes of phonics or spelling lessons a day.

Click on the RWI image below to learn more about our synthetic phonics programme and how you can best support your child at home.

Supporting Reading at Home.

As parents, you are able to support the development of reading fluency, which is a vital component of reading, by listening to your child read out loud as often as you can.

In EYFS and Key Stage 1, this is the reading and re-reading of the Read Write Inc books a minimum of three times per week so that the children are able to decode and build fluency with familiar texts. These texts support the phonics that children are learning in school that week.

From Year 2 and beyond, this is listening to your child read a book banded book or a book chosen for pleasure. We would really appreciate you engaging in the following activity at least once per week. There is a video below to demonstrate.

Ask your child to read for one minute out loud.

Whilst they are reading, note down in their Reading Record any mistakes they make. This would include mispronunciation, skipped words, unknown words etc.

After they have read for one minute, discuss the mistakes they have made by having a ‘check in’. “Well done, you read that so well! Let’s just check in with that passage, this word here is habitual – it means something is done constantly or regularly.”

Once you have discussed the mistakes and meaning of new words, ask the child to read the same passage again for one minute.

Listen out for their expression and intonation and praise them for this after their reading.

If you wish, you could extend this by choral reading (reading the passage aloud together to model fluent reading) or you reading it first as a model and then asking your child to read it in the same style and manner as you did.

Curriculum Guidance for Parents.

Below are some Guidance Documents to help you understand what your child will be learning in English in each year group and some ideas of how you can best support them at home. Click on the Year Group your child is in for more information.