Phonics

At Sacred Heart we prepare our youngest children to access the skills needed to read using high quality rhythm and rhyme activities, traditional tales and sound differentiation, including practicing speech sounds. When children start Reception class, we start the Little Wandle phonics scheme in the first weeks of the Autumn term. This is delivered daily to the whole class, by the class teacher. 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 prepares our children to go beyond the expectations of the Phonics Screening Check. Through the scheme, children learn the skills needed to read and write in phonetically plausible ways.

Children in Year 1 and 2 begin to learn spelling rules and complete the phonics screening test. Parents are invited to phonics workshops and glossaries and overviews of the phonics scheme are sent home with each child. Little Wandle Assessments and PM benchmarking assessments are completed at specific points in the year and used to inform interventions when necessary, ensuring those who are struggling readers are promptly identified and targeted, high impact interventions are put in place.

Guided Reading

Guided Reading sessions for children in Reception and Year 1 are linked directly to the phonics sessions that week and all children will read their book three times before taking it home, focussing on consolidating and fluency.

Children in Year 2 onwards are taught through the Take One Book scheme, through which the whole class explores a text per half term, with opportunities to read aloud to the class. The texts used within the scheme have been carefully selected to cover a range of genres, text types and wider curriculum areas.

All children take home a banded reading book each week and are encouraged to read as often as possible at home.

Reading for Pleasure

At Sacred Heart we have a carefully designed Long Term Plan for reading in each year group, with a range of class texts, including poetry; opportunities to listen to adults read with fluency and intonation and to discover books and authors from a range of genres. Classrooms are text rich and shared libraries provide the focal point for each Key Stage area. All children are able to select a book to take home each week, in addition to their banded reading book. Across year groups a Heritage Text Reading Spine is in place to ensure that children are exposed to classic texts and authors.

We celebrate reading together with World Book Day and termly reading events across school. Each class has an inviting reading space with appropriate books for the reading levels and interests of the children in the class. Children are able to access the Reading Room during playtimes.

Our Phonics Subject Leader is Mrs Hartley.

Pupils begin to develop their early reading skills though the discrete teaching of phonics using the Little Wandle phonics scheme, which includes the teaching of decoding skills and comprehension. All children have access to age appropriate, decodable books and rigorous and consistent guided reading sessions. Reading is embedded throughout the wider curriculum and is modelled daily through story time, including fiction and non-fiction books. All pupils have opportunities to develop their reading skills daily, and are encouraged to read at home with an adult.  We provide a text rich environment, emphasising vocabulary, in order to encourage a positive culture of reading throughout all classes and promote reading for pleasure. Pupils access further reading opportunities within the Write Stuff sessions. The progression of reading skills is carefully monitored and timely interventions put in place.  The reading and phonics lead regularly reviews progress and monitors quality and consistency of reading across the school.