How is reading taught at St Mary and St Chad CE First School?

Individual reading

The school teaches reading through a variety of methods. The graded reading scheme is put together with a range of books from the Oxford University Press including, Oxford Reading Tree, Word Sparkes and Project X. The early stages of our scheme contain phonetically decodable books. These books will be used to teach reading in the early years classes and allow the children to read words and sentences through segmenting (breaking words down into phonemes which are the smallest unit of sound) and then blending them together again. These fully decodable books are both fiction and non-fiction and are for reading at home and school alongside other ‘Reading for Pleasure Books’. There are different types of reading taking place during the week. In nursery ‘Time to Talk’ is used to develop early language skills. This then moves into Bug Club phase 1 activities after Christmas. Good practise is built into the daily routines of the class. In addition to phonics in reception, reading is built into the continuous provision, and early maths always has a story linked to it.

To aid the children's transition from phonically decodable books to independent free choice reading we have established stages called ‘Incredible Independence’ and ‘Further Independent Reading’. Children on Incredible Independent Reading (orange reading diary) choose from a given selection of books (within the reading scheme) from different genres e.g. classics, chucklers, myths and legends and non-fiction. They can read the books in any order they please but must pick at least 2 from each category. As a Further Independent Reader (green reading diary) they can choose their own books from a range of categories from the library, home or school. Challenges are set to develop diversity in their reading content. They then express their opinion of what they have read to help inform future reading material.

Teaching of reading

To support the teaching of reading in the class there will be shared, whole class, guided and one to one reading. Whole class reading is mainly used in KS2 to teach the skills e.g. skimming and scanning. In shared reading the teachers use a single text with the whole class. This text then forms the basis for the learning. Guided reading is a small group activity, comprising approximately 6 children and can be used for interventions. The reading material, questions and activities are adapted to target the specific skills, needs of the children and the learning focus.

Individual reading takes place in a one-to-one situation with the child sharing his/her book with an adult or older child in a quiet environment, allowing discussion to accompany the reading.

Phonics

The phonics scheme we use in school is ’Bug Club’. Staff have received CPD, resources purchased, parents’ meetings held in Reception and Year 1, staff are now confident with the structure and systems for teaching phonics.

Phonics tracker is used across EY, KS1 and where needed to assess the children’s knowledge of GPC, and skills of blending and segmenting. These assessments then inform teaching. It is also used to support identified KS2 children and those with SEND reading targets. For children who continue to find phonics difficult the EPATT SEND support system is used with a ‘My turn, Our turn, your turn’ approach. There is also an alternative source of reading material for these children.

Impact

The approaches to the teaching of reading and synthetic phonics have had a positive impact on the achievement of our children. 97% of year 4 children achieved age related expectations or above at the end of 2022/23. 87% of Year 1 passed in Summer 2024. (above predicted target) This is well above national averages.

Parents

Parents are engaged and support the children with learning to read. They attend phonics presentations and are happy to ask questions to clarify things. The school recently raised nearly £3000 in a sponsored read. The money has been spent on further developing the scheme based on choices made between the children and parents who were kind enough to evaluate a range of books.