St Luke's C of E Primary School

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Reading

How we teach reading

Learning to read is one of the most important things your child will learn at our school. Everything else depends on it, so we put as much energy as we possibly can into making sure that every single child learns to read as quickly as possible.

We want your child to love reading – and to want to read for themselves. This is why we work hard to make sure children develop a love of books as well as simply learning to read.

We start by teaching phonics in Reception.  Children learn how to ‘read’ the sounds in words and how those sounds can be written down. This is essential for reading, but it also helps children learn to spell well. 

Once children can blend sounds together to read words, they practise reading books that match the phonics and the ‘red words’ they know. They start to believe they can read and this does wonders for their confidence.

Teachers regularly read to the children, too, so the children get to know and love all sorts of stories, poetry and information books. This helps to extend children’s vocabulary and comprehension, as well as supporting their writing. Throughout school reading skills are also taught using a wide range of materials.

Up until the end of Year 2, your child will work with children who are at the same reading level.  This is so that the teaching can be focussed on their needs.  Some older children will continue to access phonics groups. We check children’s reading skills regularly so we that we can ensure they are in the right group.  Children will move to a different group if they are making faster progress or may have one-to-one support if we think they need some extra help. 

Key Stage 2 Reading

Once children have completed Read Write Inc phonics, our learners continue their reading journey through whole class reading sessions. Learners focus on the 6 domains of the reading curriculum; Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explain, Retrieve and Summarise. These are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts. The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency and prosody. Pupils and teachers read and engage with both the core text and bespoke supplementary texts to ensure pupils are exposed to a range of genres and disciplinary reading. 

 

Phonics Screening Check 

In the summer term, the government asks us to do a phonics check of all the Year 1 children.  We will let you know how well your child has done.

Please continue to the end to see our revised Reading Curriculum. 

How long will it take to learn to read well?

Every child is different and children will learn to read at different speeds.  By the end of Spring term Year 2, most children will be able to read aloud books that are at the right level for his or her age. In Year 3 and beyond, we concentrate more on helping children to understand what they are reading, although this work begins very early on.

What can parents/carers do to help?

Within the first two weeks of your child starting Reception, you will be invited to a meeting so that we can explain how we teach reading and show you the resources we use.  During the meeting, there are lots of suggestions on how you can help your child to read.  Your support really does get your child off to a flying start and encourages them to make great progress!

You can help your child to sound out the letters in words and then to ‘blend’ the sounds together to make a whole word. Try not to refer to the letters by their names. Help your child to focus on the sounds. You can hear how to say the sounds correctly by searching on YouTube for ‘Read Write Inc. Phonemes Pronunciation Guide’

Sometimes your child might bring home a picture book that they know well. Please don’t say, ‘This is too easy.’ Instead, encourage your child to tell you the story out loud; ask them questions about things that happen or what they think about some of the characters in the story.

Make reading fun!  Remember to keep reading to your child.  They will come across far more adventurous words than they will in their early reading books.  You will be helping them to grow a vast vocabulary and understand the meaning of different stories etc.  It will also encourage them to love books and want to read more!

To access a wide variety of free e-Books, click on www.oxfordowl.co.uk.

Kindly click on the image for additional resources to help you support your child.

You will need your child's personal login details given by the class teacher

 

Does it matter if my child misses a lesson or two?

It matters a lot if your child misses school. The way we teach children to read is very well organised, so even one missed lesson means that your child has not learnt something that they need to know to be a good reader.

 What if my child finds it difficult to learn to read?

We want every child to learn to read, however long it takes us to teach them. We will find out very quickly if your child is finding reading difficult. First, we move children to a different group, so that we can make sure that they have learnt what they need to know. If they still struggle, we may give them extra 1:1 tutoring support based on our Read Write Inc programme for reading.

If we have any concerns about your child’s reading, we will talk to you about this. 

If you have any further queries about how we teach reading, please don't hesitate to get in touch.