Reading and Phonics
Reading Schemes
At New Brancepeth Primary Academy we aim to foster a love of reading amongst our children from the day they join us. We have a planned reading spine across school for each year group which is a range of texts and poetry shared across the year. Our English curriculum is taught through novels. We have a collection of Page Turners linked to each year group to foster reading for pleasure. We also send reading books. At New Brancepeth Primary Academy, all our early reading books are colour banded linked to the Collins Big Cat Scheme to ensure that the text is appropriate for their reading level. Every colour band in EYFS and KS1 links to our Reading scheme Little Wandle: Revised Letters and Sounds. All books within EYFS and KS1 are fully decodable using phonics skills and knowledge linked to our scheme. Children will have experienced these books several times in school before they come home so they should be confident and fluent with them.
Once children are passed the phonics scheme from Year 2-6, we continue to use books matched to a child’s reading ability. In our Chatterbooks sessions, this is from the Bug Club Scheme and for Home Readers, these are from the Oxford Reading Tree Scheme. We ask parents to support children at Key Stage 2 with their comprehension and demonstrating what they have understood about the book they have read.
Reading for Pleasure
We have termly reading breakfasts and all parents are invited in to read with their children on a termly basis. We encourage you to borrow books from our school collection to enjoy with your children through our Page Turners. We encourage families to share books with their child. Children are encouraged to change their books regularly. Children will bring reading books and high frequency words home weekly and we ask you to spend some time with your child looking at these and comment in their reading record. Every child in school has a reading record book that comes home. Children will bring home books from our Page Turners which are a range of texts selected for each year group which children access across the year. In EYFS and Key Stage 1 these are books to be shared and enjoyed with your child they are not aimed at children reading them independently. Read them, enjoy them and talk about them. At Key Stage 2 the focus is on children developing their independent love of reading across a range of authors so children can access these independently.
From Reception, pupils have a home reader (Linked to Little Wandle revised Letters and Sounds) and continue to take home books for sharing with their parents alongside this. All children are asked to continue learning unknown High Frequency Words and read at least three times weekly including accessing Big Cat e-readers in EYFS & KS1, and Reading Plus at Key Stage 2 using their individual log ins.
Phonics
At New Brancepeth Primary Academy, early reading is taught using synthetic phonics as the main approach to reading. Pupils are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend the sounds all through the word for reading, and how to segment the sounds in order to write words. They are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading, but are also taught high frequency words which do not completely follow the phonic rules.
At New Brancepeth Primary School we firmly believe that good phonics teaching is at the heart of successful early reading and writing experiences. This has been an area of significant investment for us recently. We have purchased Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds, a new reading scheme and an online resources linked to this scheme to support teaching and learning and sustain the children’s progress.
Timescales given in Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds act as a guide to staff across school and where children are not keeping up same day interventions are used to support individual children.
Support for parents can be found using the following link
Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds – A Summary
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised has been developed by Little Sutton and Wandle English Hubs and taken forward by Little Sutton Primary School and Wandle Learning Trust in partnership with other phonics and early reading experts. Our schools have developed a highly effective Letters and Sounds approach over recent years, with Phonics Screening Check results consistently amongst the top five per cent in the country.
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised has been built around the update (Department for Education – Letters and Sounds improving rates of progress 2021) that we were funded to produce by the Department for Education, as well as drawing on the latest research into how children learn best, how to ensure learning stays in children’s long term memory and how best to enable children to apply their learning to become highly competent readers.
Children access structured daily phonics lessons and where they need them same day interventions to ensure all children keep up with the programme.
