Selattyn C of E Primary School

Phonics

At Selattyn C.E. Primary School we believe that phonics is fundamental in helping children build the necessary foundations to develop into fluent, confident and passionate readers and writers. At Selattyn, we have recently invested in ‘Bug Club Phonics’(Pearson),and use this to underpin our reading approach.

Phonics is all about sounds. There are 44 sounds in the English Language, which we put together to form words. Some are represented by one letter, like ‘t’, and some by two or more, like ‘ck’ in duck and ‘air’ in chair. Children are taught the sounds first, then how to match them to letters, and finally how to use the letter sounds for reading and spelling. Synthetic phonics refers to ‘synthesising’, or ‘blending, the sounds to read words. It is based on the idea that children should sound out unknown words and not rely on their context.

In EYFS and Key Stage 1, small daily phonics sessions are invaluable, and help children build up their phonic knowledge over time.

During the first few weeks of school, children in the EYFS will begin to bring home reading books. These will begin with simple picture books which contain no words. These encourage children to tell their own story by observing what is taking place in the illustrations, and helps children to develop story style language.

At this point, parents are invited in for an information meeting, to find out about phonics, familiarise themselves with our scheme and share ideas on how to help their child become a more fluent reader. At Selattyn, we think that parent involvement in their child’s learning journey is crucial! Reading with your child is the most useful, productive, powerful and enjoyable activity to do at home. These home reads are then recorded in their Reading Diary, and could include listening to your child read, an adult reading to a child, or sharing a story together!

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Children then progress onto books containing simple, short words, that they are able to sound out using their phonic knowledge. As reading confidence and fluency builds, so too does the complexity of the reading material.

 

Reading Scheme

Bug Club (Pearson) is our whole -school, phonetically-based 24/7 reading programme which connects online eBooks with printed books to teach and inspire children to read. Some pages on the eBooks contain hotspots which link to questions which children answer to earn points, giving children the incentive to read for a purpose. This is also a way of assessing comprehension. The accompanying hard copy books contain before and during tips for assessing understanding, checking vocabulary and reading the story.

Our reading scheme is levelled into different colour bands, and the children progress through them at their own pace. There are lots of phonic phase and reading recovery titles to chose from- a mixture of 200 books thoroughly and appropriately graded, with titles including Wallace and Gromit, Dr.Who, and The Incredibles, to engage the reader!

Children are heard regularly in school by a variety of adults, and hard-copy books are changed on a regular basis.

 

Celebrating Reading

We love reading at Selattyn and want the children to enjoy reading. The best way to do this is to let the children chose the books that they love to read. Popular favourites in school are Football Heroes, Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series, and the Harry Potter Collection. We have a great library in school and inviting classroom book corners full of new and modern books that are constantly refreshed.

We also run a variety of initiatives to keep reading FUN and high profile, such as Reading Buddies, World Book Day Pop-Up Shop, World Book Day Dressing Up and competitions, Author and Illustrator events, our new Outdoor Reading area, and our new Reading Focus Group, so that children have an input on new initiatives.