Phonics and Reading
Phonics
At Ashington CE School, we use a systematic synthetic phonics scheme called Read Write Inc. Children in Reception begin their Read Write Inc journey using picture clues, rhyme, song and action to learn the letter sounds. The multisensory approach helps children to embed the recognition, decoding and blending skills necessary for reading and writing.
Within the first few weeks of school the Foundation stage children will start to learn the sounds ‘a-z’, ‘th’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘ng’ and ‘nk’. These daily sessions are active, multisensory, fast paced and fun, with an opportunity to practise blending, segmenting and writing phonemes. Once children are secure with these sounds more complex sounds are introduced such as; ‘ay as in say’, ‘ee as in see’, ‘igh as in high’, ‘ow as in snow’ and ‘oo as in zoo’. Children are also taught to read and then write 'tricky words', which cannot be decoded using phonics. Children continue to follow our Read Write Inc scheme into Year 1, Year 2 and beyond as necessary, to support their reading journey.
Reading
Our Vision for Reading at Ashington CE Primary School is to create and foster a love of reading and books. We want our children to leave our school keen readers who can read fluently for both pleasure and learning. Through our teaching we want to develop our children’s imagination and knowledge through a love of books and stories. We want to give our children the necessary skills to become thoughtful and confident readers for life, which will help them in everything they do.
We believe that every child should be given the tools to develop into an enthusiastic and confident reader both at home and at school. Reading improves language and vocabulary, inspires imagination and gives everyone the opportunity to develop and foster new interests.
In Reception and Key Stage 1 children are taught the letters and sounds through a systematic synthetic phonics programme called ‘Read, Write Inc’. Once the children begin to read sentences, they can then learn to comprehend and understand the text they are reading. Texts are engaging and provide them with the opportunity to practise their phonic sounds. Children are taught strategies to understand, enjoy and learn from a range of texts independently. Through this they will become fluent, expressive readers with the stamina to enjoy challenging texts.
Throughout Key Stage 2 the children have daily DEAR ‘Drop Everything and Read’ time. Book discussions are also widely encouraged in class. We support our children to empathise with characters, share opinions and debate topics. Whole class and smaller group guided reading session support all our children to access and discuss topics, themes and ideas introduced through books.
Throughout the school teachers read aloud books and poems to their classes. Teachers foster and nurture a love of books by placing reading at the centre of the curriculum. Teachers introducing new texts with enthusiasm and enjoyment, promoting a sense of wonder and expectation as the text is explored.
The children at Ashington CE School have independent access to a wide variety of high-quality texts. Every term our class book corners and school library are restocked with books provided by the West Sussex Library Service. All teachers use quality texts across the curriculum and provide opportunities to extend and enrich the children’s learning.
We know that reading at home is an essential part of children becoming excellent readers. Children are encouraged to read regularly at home and children’s individual reading records are an important source of communication between home and school. We provide our early readers with a wide range of colour banded fiction and non-fiction books that follow the our RWI phonics programme. Our more confident readers have access to further levelled reading books to support their reading journey. From Reception to Year 6 children have access to class book corners and school library to select reading for pleasure books to read at school and share at home. We believe it is this level of choice, teacher encouragement, support and enthusiasm that enables all the children of Ashington CE School to become enthusiastic and independent life-long readers.