Our Reading Scheme
At Sherwood Park, children are provided with a rich and varied range of texts to read at home and at school to practice and apply their reading knowledge and skills. They are encouraged to read a wide range of texts – fiction, poetry and non-fiction texts – to support and consolidate their understanding of word reading and their comprehension skills.
Our reading scheme is in line with age-related expectations (EYFS, KS1 and KS2) with explicit links to the phonic phases. We aim to have two main categories that our books fall into: ‘Fully Decodables’ and ‘Sharing Books’ (EYFS/KS1) / ‘Free Readers’ (Year 2 and KS2).
In Reception and Year 1 children read Collins Big Cat for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised books which are fully decodable books matched to our programme progression. These books are to be kept separate from the rest of our scheme and are utilised by the EYFS and KS1 staff as they implement and teach our SSP programme. They may also be used by children in Year 2 and Key Stage 2 who may require additional support with their reading skills (Rapid Catch Up). These books provide our children with the opportunity to practise and consolidate their word reading skills through phonically-based texts and to deepen their comprehension skills through engaging and rich texts.
Our aim with the reading books we provide is to:
- Teach – using systematic, synthetic phonics (Little Wandle) with books that consolidate and embed this.
- Practise – with fully decodable books linked to the children’s phase in phonics.
- Offer richer reading – through a huge selection of stories and text types within our ‘Sharing Book’ / ‘Free Reader’ range.
- Support parents – with engaging stories and texts that are accessible for all.
Once children have completed the Little Wandle phonics programme, the class teacher will decide if children need to continue with phonically decodable books or whether they are ready to become a ‘Free Reader’. If children need to continue with phonically decodable books, then they will access our colour banded books. Children will choose their home reading book from a colour band, which will help to ensure that the book they select is at the appropriate reading level for them. Each coloured book band is further sub-levelled to ensure that there is clear progression within each coloured band. A wide range of reading schemes, such as Jelly and Bean, Phonics Bug, Project X, Songbirds and Traditional Tales, are included in each coloured band. This is to ensure that the children experience a range of stories, text types and illustrations. To continue to embed and promote a love of reading throughout the school, the children in EYFS and Key Stage 1 are also encouraged to take home a ‘Sharing Book’ that they can borrow from their class library. These texts are not fully-decodable and should always be read with an adult at home or at school.
Once children move beyond Lime book band, they can have a free choice of books from their class library (‘Free Reader’). We hope that all children will be a ‘Free Reader’ by the end of Year 3. Those children working in Key Stage 2 who are working below age expectations will be supported through interventions and schemes appropriate to the child's needs.
