Phonics

Learning to read is a fundamental skill for life. In EYFS, children are taught the sounds made by individual, pairs and clusters of letters. They read banded books with strongly patterned language and picture cues. In EYFS and Key Stage 1, children have regular phonics sessions that assist them to recognise letters, understand the sound they make and blend these sounds together to create words. Letter-sound correspondence is taught through a highly structured synthetic phonic approach. Alongside this they learn to instantly recognise by sight the most common words in the English language. Many of these words are not phonically regular and learning them by heart is vital as they appear so regularly in all the texts they encounter. To teach beginning readers about letter-sound correspondence we follow ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) developed for schools by schools. Based on the original Letters and Sounds, but extensively revised to provide a complete teaching programme meeting all the expectations of the National Curriculum and preparing children to go beyond the expectations of the Phonics Screening Check. More information for parents is available at https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ 

Little Wandle Phonics Overview

Little Wandle PowerPoint for Parents

  

Reading Scheme            

Big Cat Phonics for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised

Children will come home with a reading practice book. This will be at the correct phonic stage for your child. They should be able to read this fluently and independently. This book has been carefully matched to your child’s current reading level. If your child is reading it with little help, please don’t worry that it’s too easy – your child needs to develop fluency and confidence in reading. Listen to them read the book. Remember to give them lots of praise – celebrate their success! If they can’t read a word, read it to them. After they have finished, talk about the book together.  The children have to be able to demonstrate they thoroughly understand what they are reading and why.  In order for the children to get the very best from a book, they must be able to enjoy the text presented to them.  We encourage the children to become reading detectives as they learn to pick apart the hidden messages contained within a story and help them to learn how to read for pleasure which in turn allows them to become engaged readers with a developed love for stories. We use the Collins banded reading scheme Big Cat Phonics, which follows the 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' scheme. These books are levelled so that children can progress through the books in levels of difficulty, reading deliberately patterned, simple, repetitive grammatical structures helps children to achieve early success. In addition to reading the physical books, children also have access to an online library.

Click here for more information. 

Once children have successfully reached the end of the Little Wandle phonics scheme, children can select books from our fluency range. These books help children successfully bridge the gap from being a developing reader to a confident reader who enjoys reading for pleasure. Once confidence has been built, children will then be able to choose more freely the books they wish to read, whilst still being supported by their class teaching team. 

Click to view: 

Reception Phonics Workshop

 

 

 

                                       

 

Reading Strategy

Our Reading strategy is based on established and evidence informed texts such as, ‘Reading Reconsidered’ by Doug Lemov, and ‘The Art and Science of Primary Teaching’ by Christopher Such. In Such’s book, reading is described as "the product of decoding and language comprehension, where weaknesses in either will lead to difficulties with reading comprehension."  For a child to be able to comprehend what they are reading, they need to be able to read fluently, have a broad vocabulary and a deep knowledge of the world. For this reason, our reading strategy incorporates all three of these elements: 

Developing fluency

Our reading strategy has a heavy emphasis on supporting children to become confident, fluent readers. We use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds as a robust systematic synthetic phonics programme to help deliver our phonics sessions in EYFS and Year 1. Alongside continued phonics teaching in Y2 (and beyond), children participate in daily whole-class reading sessions, where children engage in both extracts from a variety of text types, but also physical books which they read as a class together for pure enjoyment. Through this, children improve their accuracy, pace and prosody - the three components of fluent reading. 

Improving vocabulary

A wide range of challenging vocabulary is embedded in our curriculum, and teachers also explore new words at every opportunity during the normal school day. We also include some discrete vocabulary instruction when encountered in all our lessons. This involves children engaging with 'tier two words' or Latin/Greek root words. In these sessions, children deepen their knowledge of the English language and are given lots of opportunities to revisit and retrieve this new, high-level vocabulary. 

Knowledge of the world

When a child tries to comprehend what they are reading, they draw on their own background knowledge to try to make sense of the context and the language being used. We use the model of text to text, text to self and text to world to aid connections to a child’s prior knowledge and increase their chances of comprehending the texts they read. 

 

Reading Assessment

All children are assessed three times a year on their reading comprehension and from Year 2 onwards, children’s reading fluency is assessed as part of our ongoing analysis of where to support children best. Our core questioning framework will follow children throughout their time at Cranbrook Primary School, however the complexity and difficulty of texts will increase as a child progresses through each year group. As part of preparing our students of examinations, during Upper Key Stage 2, children will be exposed to lengthier texts and specific question types to familiarise them with the end of Key Stage expectations and best prepare them for success during examinations. However, the core strategies at the heart of our reading curriculum will remain. 

 

Reading Events

Drop everything and read!

We know the importance of children being read aloud to so every day at 1 o’clock, each class is read aloud to. This enables all children to share a range of texts during their time at our school.

 

Book Grab

We realise that once you have developed an appetite for reading, it can be quite expensive to constantly buy new books to read. At Cranbrook Primary, we regularly hold ‘Book Grabs’ to encourage children to read new books. This is an excellent way of recycling books, saving money and encouraging book recommendations amongst the children. 

 

Oxford University Press - Word Gap

We’re proud to be a Word Gap Partner School in association with Oxford University Press. We’re committed to closing the word gap and improving children’s vocabulary and wider life chances. To find out more about the word gap, read the associated research and available resources here. 

 

Click here to see the diary of reading events at Cranbrook CE Primary

 

The Library

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Our School Library

We were fortunate enough to have our library updated in 2018. Our brand new library was opened by Councillor Seán Holden. It is well stocked and is a hub for learning in school.

 

Our Librarians

At Cranbrook Primary, our library is run by our Key Stage 2 Librarians and some of our excellent volunteers. Librarians man the library during lunchtimes, helping children to select new books and complete their Accelerated Reader quizzes. They also share stories together and complete book reviews with the children based on the books they have shared.

 

Visiting Cranbrook Library

Each class frequently visits Cranbrook library which is conveniently located at the end of our road. During the visits, children receive a tour of the library and a talk from a librarian who explains the services on offer. They also read books based on their topic and complete a quiz based on the knowledge they have acquired. The visits have created a real buzz around reading and it is great to see children accessing such a valuable service in the community.

 

“Visiting Cranbrook Library is really fun because I get to find new books.” Year 4 child

“The library has a range of exciting books for both children and adults.” Year 6 child

“Even I discovered new books in the library.” Member of staff