Reading and Phonics

 Reading, Phonics and Spelling

A child’s ‘reading journey’ begins with ‘learning to read’ and moves on into ‘reading to learn’

At Malden Parochial School, your child’s reading experience is not simply the reading book that comes home. Reading is happening all the time in the classroom. It is taught in English lessons, but children are also practising and using their ‘reading’ throughout the day. They are reading instructions, maths language, information books, topics and signs, displays, registers, charts, games, etc. They are reading on the computer, interactive whiteboard screens and whilst watching television at home too.

Phonics

At Malden Parochial we teach phonics (letter sounds), using the systematic synthetic phonics approach outlined in the Department for Education phonics scheme, ‘Letters and Sounds’. Learning begins in our Nursery and is built upon throughout Reception and Years 1 and 2. The children are taught phonics on a daily basis.

 
Children learn the sounds then blend them together to read a word. To spell, children are taught to say the word by segmenting it into smaller sounds and then writing it.

Children are also taught to read and spell high frequency words. These are words that they commonly find in the books they read. Some may be ‘tricky words’ which are words that cannot be broken down and deciphered using their phonic skills. The children will be taught to read these by sight.

Letters and Sounds is divided into six phases, which children continue to learn and practice throughout the school.

Nursery - Phase One
Supports the importance of speaking and listening and develops children’s discrimination of sounds, including letter sounds.

Reception - Phase Two
Children learn to pronounce the sounds themselves in response to letters, before
blending them. This leads to them being able to read simple words and captions. For example: d – u – ck

Letters: s, a, t, p, i, n, m, d, g, o, c, k, ck, e, u, r, h, b, f, ff, l, ll, ss
 

Reception - Phase Three
This phase completes the teaching of the alphabet and moves on to sounds represented by more than one letter (digraph and trigraph). For example: t – or – ch. The children will learn letter names and how to read and spell some high frequency/tricky words.

Letters: j, v, w, x, y, z, zz, qu, ch, sh, th, ng, ai, ee, igh, oa, oo, ar, or, ur, ow, oi, ear, air, ure, er

Reception and Year 1 - Phase Four
The children learn to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants.
 For example: s – t – a – n – d
 

Year 1 - Phase Five
The children broaden their knowledge of sounds for use in reading and spelling. They will begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words.
For example: m – o – n – k – ey

Sounds: ay, ou, ie, ea, oy, ir, ue, aw, wh, ph, ew, oe, au, ey, a_e, i_e, u_e, o_e

In June, the children in Year 1 are tested on their phonics in a National Phonics Screening check.  This is a check of 20 real words and 20 alien words.  Parents will receive their child’s results at the end of the summer term. 

Year 2 - Phase Six
This focuses on word-specific spellings. It encourages children to become fluent readers and increasingly accurate spellers. This includes spelling rules such as adding suffixes (- est, - ly, - ful, - ness, - ment, - ing) and prefixes (un…, im…, dis…, re…). Children are also taught how to make plurals and spell homophones such as blue / blew.

In Year 2, the pupils revise previously taught phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (ways of writing the sounds) and learn a range of new ones. Children who do not meet the expected standard in the Year 1 National Phonics Screening, repeat it in Year 2.

High Frequency Words
Children are taught to read and spell the following high frequency words.

Reading 

Reading is at the heart of all that we do at Malden Parochial School. We inspire our children to become confident and happy readers with a real love of books, which will last a lifetime. In order to achieve this, we use a number of strategies throughout school to develop their skills as readers.

In Reception, your child will initially bring home wordless books. Books without words have an extremely important part to play in the acquisition of reading skills. The ability to decode words is part of being able to read but being able to understand what is being read and to re-tell the story is vital. Alongside these books you child will be exposed to key words, some that can be sounded out and others that are ‘look and say’ (tricky words). As they develop in confidence, they will be introduced to simple, one sentence a page ‘reading’ books. These books will allow them to practise the phonic skills they have learnt and develop their understanding of text. As they grow in confidence, the books begin to have more complex sentences and a greater variety of vocabulary.

As a child becomes a more confident reader, we will further develop their interests and enjoyment of reading by choosing from a selection of simple ‘chapter’ books and age appropriate information books before ultimately moving on to even more complex texts as their skills develop.

All children are encouraged to enjoy sharing with their parents as many books and different types of texts as possible, not only to help them develop a love of reading, but also to begin to appreciate it as an essential skill and part of everyday life.

Guided reading, shared reading, 1:1 reading, whole-class reading

Our curriculum provides reading opportunities in all areas of learning.  Reading skills are explicitly taught through guided, shared or 1:1 reading and according to the needs of the child. Our reading scheme is book banded by colour and is matched to children’s reading ability, which is assessed regularly.  

Whole class reading takes place throughout the day as the children read instructions, the day and the date on the board, refer to the class visual timetable, access labelled resources and read text from the Interactive White Board.

Comprehension

Reading is much more than just being able to read words. It is essential that children also read with understanding. As part of the teaching of reading skills at Malden Parochial, staff work on developing the children’s knowledge of the different text types and the varying ways in which information can be presented in books and other publications. Children are also encouraged to think about different authors, the style of books they write, their choices of vocabulary to involve the reader and how they build a story or write a poem.

We develop the skills of comprehension alongside the decoding and sight reading skills to ensure that children learn to read and comprehend at the same speed.  We teach this skill through reading to and with the children.

In Key Stage Two children further enhance their fluency, decoding and comprehension. This also helps to further develop children’s independence as readers.

When developing research skills, children are asked to consider which texts and alternative sources are likely to best provide the information they need and to choose the most appropriate. They are taught how to ‘skim read’, pick out key words and information from a piece of text, interpret diagrams and graphs, answer questions and take notes.

We all know that to be able to read fluently, with understanding, is a crucial life skill. We continually use it to make sense of the world around us and to access and share information in the workplace. For some it is also a relaxation and a lifelong pleasure!

Reading and Spelling
Children are expected to read and spell theses words by the end of the academic year stated:

Reception

Year 1 and Year 2 – By the end of Key stage one

First 100 High Frequency Words
in frequency order reading down the columns

Next 200 High Frequency Words

in frequency order reading down the columns (water to laughed then let's to grow)

Year 3 and Year 4 

Year 5 and 6

Links to useful websites
https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm
http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/grownups/the-alphablocks-guide-to-phonics
https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/learn-to-read-phonics/
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/
https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/games/tm1

https://www.funbrain.com/books
https://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/courses/elc/studyzone/330/reading/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround

https://fizzyfunnyfuzzy.com/

http://www.magickeys.com/books/