Approach to Teaching Reading

Children sat at table with a teacher learning words

Phonics and Early Reading

Every day at Chiltern Primary School children throughout the Foundation stage and Key stage 1 have a focused phonics session. This is really important as phonics underpins and enables children to to learn to read and enables them to be a successful reader and access all other areas of the school curriculum.

Children first learn their letter sounds taking care to pronounce them correctly. Then they apply these to word building so they can read small words. The letter sounds are taught in the order that the speech sounds are acquired, therefore it supports the early stages of speech and language development. At Chiltern Primary School we use Read Write Inc as the basis for our phonic teaching.

Read Write Inc. is systematic approach to teaching phonics. The children learn to read the phonemes and blend them together to read the words. The children learn to read small words and then build up to two and three syllable words with all 44 phonemes and their alternative choices. At the same time the children are taught to segment the words to spell them and choose the correct spelling choice.

Children are also taught to use and apply their phonics to read both real and nonsense words, children in Year 1 are required to be tested using their phonics to read a range of real and nonsense words. The children also learn to read a range of other words which aren’t phonetically decodable and they learn to read them by sight.

During phonics children read every day individually, in small groups and as a whole class. The reading books selected by the teachers are very carefully matched to a child’s level of phonic's ability providing a suitable challenge for them to comprehend the book and answer questions about what they are reading about. Children take the book home to read again with parents and carers or by themselves as they have already have read of it at school. The Reading programme is very structured and the teaching staff are coached to develop their teaching skills so that the reading programme is consistent and rigorous. Children are assessed every six weeks to ensure the group in which they are placed is at the optimum for learning the next steps.

Reading and Early Writing

Whilst children are building up their phonics skills they learn to apply these within their reading and writing.

During their phonics sessions they are able to apply their newly acquired reading and writing skills to write captions, read books and investigate spelling choices.

A variety of different genres, both fiction and non-fiction are chosen at the appropriate level of ability for each child. As well as being able to read the text and answer simple questions, children are encouraged to discuss the book, expressing their individual opinions of the content and answer inference questions and will be asked to compare the themes and speculate on the tone of different texts. Children are actively encouraged to choose books to take home from the libraries for enjoyment. In the foundation stage, stay and read sessions are popular with our puppeteer as well as our singing and drama sessions on a Thursday which enhance language development and storytelling which all go hand in hand with reading development.

Life Long Reading

As children become confident readers using their phonics skills the children progress to become more independent readers. Children are encouraged to read regularly at home by themselves and with their parents/carers. We challenge the children to complete a quiz about their book

using Accelerated Reader. This ensures that the children are reading a book chosen by themselves at the correct level to enable challenge and enjoyment. Teachers oversee the programme encouraging the children to challenge themselves and win book prizes for their own home libraries.

We have a large library and reading areas in all classrooms where we encourage children to read for pleasure. Children select their own books and the JLT welcome suggestions regarding the texts they would like to read in future.

Reading is a valuable, lifelong skill that intersects all areas of the curriculum. We develop our pupils reading through independent and shared reading as well as cross curricular sessions which empower them to find pleasure in reading.

Information for parents

Read Write inc Reading at Home Booklet 1

Read Write inc Reading at Home Booklet 2