Phonics and Reading
Throughout the Early Years and Key Stage 1, the children are taught synthetic phonics to enable them to become confident and fluent readers. We use the actions and songs from Jolly Phonics to teach the 44 sounds of the English language and the corresponding spellings. As each new sound is taught, the children continue to revise the previous sounds and apply their knowledge by blending them together for reading, and segmenting words into sounds for writing.
The children have access to a wide variety of reading books which have all been placed in to a graded colour band. As soon as they begin to read texts, beginner readers will encounter words that they will find difficult to decode using the limited phonic knowledge they have learned. We call these words ‘tricky’ words. As they learn the phonic code and develop their decoding skills, less words are ‘tricky’. Reading books at home and school enables them to consolidate their understanding of phonics and recognise the key tricky words by sight.
As the children move in to Key Stage 2 and their ability to decode is secure, a greater emphasis is placed on the comprehension of the text. They learn to select and retrieve information from the texts they read, often quoting directly or using inference to deduce meanings. They are encouraged to comment on the structure and organisation of texts, the language choice of the author and the overall effect of the literary features used. We have two well stocked libraries that the children are able to borrow books from.