Early Reading and Phonics Intent

We understand that the skill of reading allows pupils to access all areas of the curriculum as well as the world around them.  We also believe that reading should bring pleasure and experiences that cannot be achieved elsewhere; entering new worlds, meeting people from history and understanding a range of view points and emotions.

We teach Synthetic Phonics and use the Sounds Write programme.

Early Reading and Phonics Implementation

 Pupils have the opportunity to apply their developing phonic knowledge and skills through shared reading and writing across all subjects.  For one to one reading both at home and school children have fully decodable books that are closely matched to the phonemes (sounds) they are learning in class.  We use the Dandelion Series of books supplemented with decodable books from other schemes.

                                         https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/

Pupils in Nursery begin to take wordless books home to encourage an engagement and love of books straight away.  At the same time they are looking at the first Unit of Sounds Write.   This learning is then developed further as they progress to Foundation Stage Two, where we continue to give children the best start we can by teaching them to read as soon as possible so we can provide them with the skills they need for the future.  Their phonic knowledge continues to be developed as they work through the Sounds Write programme both reading the sounds and spelling them to help develop this link and understanding.

The teaching of phonics continues to progress through into Year One where children are then ready to take their Phonics Screening Check.  This consists of 20 real and 20 pseudo (nonsense) words.  Children use their decoding skills to read these.  Children who do not meet the required standard in Year One will re-take this again in Year 2 after they have had a chance to further consolidate their learning.  Please see below for further information:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phonics-screening-check-sample-materials-and-training-video/phonics-screening-check-structure-and-content-of-the-check

Early Reading and Phonics Impact

Our early reading and phonics teaches all key elements of conceptual understanding, factual knowledge and the three essential skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation necessary for learning to read and spell.  At Chiseldon we aim for all children to achieve the automaticity that underlines the fluency of every succesful reader.