Sherwood Park Primary School

At Sherwood Park we value reading as a key life skill. We believe that reading provides pupils with a purpose and context for writing and develops their ability to speak and listen.

Pupils are encouraged to read widely across both fiction and non-fiction to develop their knowledge of themselves and the world in which they live, to establish an appreciation and love of reading, to gain knowledge across the curriculum and develop their comprehension skills. It is our intention to ensure that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils are able to use their knowledge, skills and understanding to read fluently, and with confidence, across a range of different subjects in order to succeed in their forthcoming secondary education and the wider world.  

Intent

• To teach children to read with confidence, fluency and understanding.
• To develop enthusiastic, motivated and reflective readers, through contact with challenging and quality texts.
• To encourage a love of literature and an enjoyment of reading for pleasure.
• To develop children’s confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types.
• To equip children with the skills needed to decode words, in order to be able to read fluently and with understanding of what they have read.
• To provide children with a consistent phonics approach as a basis for their English learning and continuous development.
• To enable children to become confident, independent readers, through an appropriate focus on phonics, word, sentence and text-level knowledge.

Implementation

At Sherwood Park, our reading curriculum links closely with our writing curriculum; we use a text-based approach that enables us to create opportunities for reading, discussion and writing within English and reading lessons. In the Foundation Stage, the teaching of reading is based on two areas of learnings: Communication and Language and Literacy in The Early Years and Foundation Stage (EYFS). In Key Stage 1 and 2, the teaching of reading is based on the 2014 National Curriculum for English and what we know and believe is successful about teaching children to read. In line with the programmes of study for reading at Key Stages 1 and 2 in the National Curriculum, our teaching objectives cover two dimensions: 

• Word Reading
• Comprehension (both listening and reading)

Phonics and Early Reading

We introduce phonics in Nursery by using the Little Wandle Foundations for Phonics which uses engaging games to teach oral blending and phonemic awareness. We continue to teach phonics in Reception by following the progression of Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. The progression of the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through the school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Sherwood Park, we also model the application of the alphabetic code in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum.

Foundations for Phonics in Nursery

• We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and Language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:

• Sharing high-quality stories and poems.
• Learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes.
• Activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending.
• Attention to high-quality language.

• We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

Daily Phonics Lessons in Reception and Year 1

• We teach phonics for 30-minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.

• Children make a strong start in Reception; teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.

• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:

• Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
• Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Daily Phonics Lessons in Year 2

Due to COVID-19 we have adapted our current phonics programme to meet the needs of the children.

• In the Autumn Term we teach phonics for up to 30-minutes a day with an emphasis on revising Phase 5 using the Year 1 planning. This prepares the children for the re-scheduled Phonics Screening Check taking place in December 2021.

Daily Keep-Up Lessons ensure every child learns to read

• Any child who needs additional practice has daily keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.

• We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 or 3 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the keep-up resources.
• If any child in Years 4 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading, we plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10-minutes and take place at least three times a week.

Teaching Reading: Reading Practise Sessions in Reception and Year 1

• We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These:

• Are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of up to six children.
• Use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids on pages 11–20 of ‘Application of Phonics to Reading’.
• Are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.

• Each Reading Practise Session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children’s working memory. The Reading Practice Sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

• Decoding
• Prosody - teaching children to read with understanding and expression.
• Comprehension - teaching children to understand the text.

• In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practise in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.

• In Year 2 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

Additional Phonics and Reading Support for Vulnerable Children

• Children in Reception and Key Stage 1 receive additional phonics ‘keep up’ sessions either on a 1:1 basis or in a small group.
• Every class has targeted readers who are heard at least three times a week. Targeted readers represent 10% of a class and are reviewed by the class teacher every half term.
• Children across Years 4 – 6 who need additional support will have 1:1 reading with decodable books at least three times a week.

Ensuring Consistency and Pace of Progress

• Every Reception and Key Stage 1 teacher and TA in our school has been trained to teach reading. The aim throughout the 2021-22 academic year is to train all staff and provide ongoing mentoring and coaching for teachers and TAs in Reception and Key Stage 1 who are delivering the programme. This is to ensure we have the same expectations of progress.
• We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load.
• Weekly content grids map each element of new learning to each day, week and term for the duration of the programme.
• Lesson templates, prompt cards and how to videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.
• The Reading Lead and SLT use the audit and prompt cards to monitor and observe teaching. They use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

Home Reading

• In Reception and Year 1 the decodable reading practise book is accessed at home via Collins e-Books to ensure success is shared with the family.

• Sharing books also go home for parents and carers to share and read to children.
• We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops. All of this is shared and discussed at a parent workshop

Reading for Pleasure

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

• We read to children every day. Each class has a timetabled story time and both children and adults make book recommendations.

• In Reception and Key Stage 1 children have a book vote display in their classroom. Each day they are encouraged to vote for the book they would like read to them at story time. In Key Stage 2 children vote for the book they would like to hear at story time at the start of every half-term.
• In Nursery/Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free-flow time and the books are continually refreshed.

• Children from Nursery/Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school.

• Every classroom has a themed reading area that contains a selection of age-appropriate books that are organised by genre (KS2) or text-type (Early Years and KS1).
• Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of Reading for Pleasure events (book fairs, author visits and workshops, national events, local library visits, Summer Reading Competition etc).

Reading in Years 2 - 6

• Every day, children in Year 2 (mid-December 2021 onwards) and Key Stage 2 will have a Reading for Meaning slot, which is separate from the main English lesson. These sessions are timetabled for 30-minutes after morning registration (8.55am – 9.25am). The model for Reading for Meaning, with the exception of Year 6, is as follows:

• Day 1                     Introduction to text
• Day 2                     Children to answer questions about the text
• Day 3                     Go through the answers to the comprehension questions as a class
• Day 4                     Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) Activity
• Day 5                     Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) Activity

• Class teachers use the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 reading domains to plan their Reading for Meaning sessions in order to encourage children to demonstrate their understanding of the different texts that they are exposed to.
• Children who are not yet ‘Free Readers’ will work through our school reading scheme – these are levelled books which match the children’s current phonic/reading ability. We expect a parent or carer to read these books with the child regularly and make comments in their Reading Record.
• Children are encouraged to read at home at least four times a week.
• Once a term, class teachers in Years 1 to 6 use Rising Stars (PiRA) to assess children against the reading domains. These assessments inform planning and, using the Shine Intervention tool, allows teachers to identify and address any gaps children’s learning. Class teachers in Reception and Year 1 complete half-termly phonic assessments and use an online tracker to submit data, which ensures children who may be falling behind are targeted with appropriate interventions.

Impact

Our systematic approach to teaching phonics at Sherwood Park, combined with our high expectations, has had a very positive impact on the reading outcomes for our pupils. In December 2020, when children in Year 2 completed the Phonics Screening Check, 89% of the cohort passed the assessment, exceeding our initial target. Those children who did not pass have all made steady progress since and are being supported through a tailored programme of phonics matched to their individual needs. We believe in high aspirations for our children at Sherwood Park and have predicted an 80% pass rate for the Phonics Screening Check in December 2021.

Assessment

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

• Assessment for learning is used:

• Daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support.
• Weekly in the review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

• Summative assessment is used:

• Every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
• By the Reading Lead and SLT, and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

Statutory Assessment

• Attainment in reading is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of Key Stage 1 and 2. These results are measured against the reading attainment of children nationally.
• Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.

Ongoing Assessment for Catch-Up

• Children in Years 2 to 6 are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment, and where necessary, through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.

• Any children who join the school are assessed by their class teacher to identify if they need support with reading and/or phonics. If they do, we will use assessments and place these children within either a phonic intervention group or they will receive 1:1 catch-up support.