Tous Ensemble, En Chemin Avec Jesus
Learning to Read
The reading schemes used in school are Collins Big Cat Phonics, Pearson Phonics Bug, Oxford Reading Tree and Heinemann Storyworlds. Reading books are colour levelled according to the Association of Education Book Bands for Guided Reading. The children will initially be introduced to wordless picture books and are encouraged to talk about the pictures, predict endings etc. They will then progress onto simple texts, which introduce high frequency words and phonetically decodable words.
Reading is taught through synthetic phonics, key word recognition and developing a repertoire of word attack strategies. The children develop these vital skills at their own pace and are encouraged to use a variety of reading strategies to support their understanding of a range of texts.
A “Letters and Sounds” session introduces letter sounds, letter names and ‘tricky’ words systematically to the children every day. The programme allows children to build up a secure knowledge of phonemes, graphemes, digraphs and trigraphs as well as an automatic recognition of ‘tricky’ words.
Homework consists of one levelled reading scheme books every day, aimed at developing phonic skills and high frequency word recognition. In addition, every Friday, children will also bring home a “real” book which children select themselves from our school library. After sharing these books together with you, children are encouraged to practise developing their sight word recognition using 'word ladders' which consolidate the ‘tricky’ words we are learning to read in school.