English

Reading is a key skill and we want children to have a love of books as well as to become fluent and lifelong readers.

We actively involve parents and carers to be involved in reading with their children, both at home and at school through enjoying and sharing books together. We have a wide range of quality resources and texts to support children’s reading. Children read and are read to every day in school through a variety of approaches, our children love to read. 

Phonics 

As soon as your child starts in Reception s/he will start to learning Phonics – learning to understand the alphabetic code. This involves learning letter sounds and shapes, hearing and saying the sounds in words in the correct order as well as being well on the way to being able to read and write the 44 phonemes (or units of sound) in the English language.

At Ashurst Wood we use 'Success for all Phonics' by FFT 

What is 'Success for All Phonics'? 

New for 2023-24- we have purchased a phonics scheme called ‘Success for All’ from the Fischer Family Trust (FFT). This scheme has been validated by the Department for Education. The reading books run directly alongside what the children are learning in phonics so they can practice what sounds they are currently learning.

The Reception and Year 1 children have a daily reading lesson in addition to the phonics lesson, where they spend a week reading the same book, which links to their phonics lessons.

Throughout the week, they will work on the following skills: exploring the book, reading ‘green’ words (decodable words they are learning), learning how to read ‘red’ words that are the ‘tricky’ or ‘common exception words’ for their year group, reading the text chorally as a class, partner reading, discussing what they have read, comprehension questions/skills and writing about what they have read. This helps build their confidence and fluency, enabling  them to become successful independent readers. Please encourage your child to read this book at home. 

In addition to their phonetically decodable book 'learning to read book'. Your child will bring home a 'learning to love reading' book. (A book chosen from the class or library). This will give them the opportunity to practice the knowledge of sounds and the segmenting and blending skills they have learnt in phonics at home, by reading these fully decodable books (at their level) as well as promote and enjoy sharing a book with your child, asking questions about the story  This will give you, as parents a better understanding of where your child is at with phonics and support you, in helping them at home.

The Success for All reading books (learning to read books) are issued to each Phonics Group on a Monday morning by their group teacher and they link directly to the phonemes children are learning in their group at the time of issue. They are a superb way of reinforcing the phonemes and graphemes they are learning, through exciting stories and also non-fiction texts. These books are also available digitally and you will be sent a QR code for the relevant reading book.  

There are 68 steps that your child will work through from the start of Reception to the end of Year 1. The scope and sequence provides an overview of the Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) programme, which is aligned to the Letters and Sounds. Children learn to read and make progress through six phases.

They start the shared readers from Phase 2 where the teaching of GPCs in phonics lessons is aligned with the shared reader. Phase 6 provides lessons to consolidate spelling skills and less common GPCs.

All staff teaching phonics have undergone extensive training in order to be able to deliver this new scheme. They all have detailed planning that is divided into weeks or ‘steps’ that cover the Grapheme, Phoneme, Correspondence (GPC’s) for both phonics and reading.

To support both teachers and children, the phonics lessons follow a consistent daily structure with clear timing goals for each activity. This consistent approach enables lessons to be taught with pace as everybody understands the routine and what is expected. Each lesson lasts 25 minutes and follows the same basic sequence each day:

• Review of Previously Taught GPCs (10 minutes)
• Teach, Practise and Apply New GPC (15 minutes)

Phonics Vocabulary

From the very first moment your child starts learning phonics at Ashurst Wood, they are introduced to the vocabulary detailed on the chart below:

Phonics advice for parents

It is important that you pronounce the phonemes clearly and correctly. Please use the videos in the Parent Portal to guide you. This will help your child when they learn to blend phonemes together. Parent Portal (fft.org.uk) 

If you are learning a new phoneme with your child, ensure you say the phoneme over and over again so that they can really process it. Think of lots of words with that sound, that they know and show them pictures of those objects with the word written underneath.

For practicing letter formation, try this in a variety of ways such as: forming it with a finger in the air, on the palm of the hand, on the back of someone, on the floor, in paint, glitter or sand. Try these before writing on a whiteboard or paper.

If your child is practicing reading and writing words with a new phoneme they have learnt in school, encourage them to draw sound buttons under the word. They can clearly segment and then blend the phonemes together to read the word.

If you are looking at a phoneme with your child, tell your child the phoneme but explain that the phoneme is represented by the letter ___ and tell them the letter name. They need to be able to distinguish between phonemes and letter names.

Further Help for Parents

There is a Parent Portal Parent Portal (fft.org.uk) , where you will find all the resources to help you support your child’s phonics and early reading. There are helpful videos modeling correct pronunciation for the phonemes. The materials are designed to support the learning your child is experiencing in school. 

Below are some links to additional resources to help support your child. 

FFT Phonics

The teaching and practice of reading

The teaching and practice of reading takes place in a variety of ways: -Shared reading and whole class reading, where the teacher uses multiple copies of the same text, an Ebook or other form of large text and models good reading to the whole class. -Guided reading where a group of children work with the teacher who teaches them specific reading skills -Independent reading; children are encouraged to do this as much as possible in a range of activities, with great importance placed on the enjoyment of reading. -Individual reading practice might be with the teacher, teaching assistant, volunteer or an older child as a “buddy”.

Reading through structured play

Creative learning in EYFS and into Year 1 encourages good speaking, listening, reading and writing in a range of contexts. Storytelling discussion, outdoor play, puppet play and role play will all be activities that your child will be excited to tell you about and where reading can play a major part. If your child wants to read or write at home in any context, this should be encouraged and praised.

Reading linked to writing

Once children begin to blend letters to read words, they can begin to say the sounds needed to write simple words and are encouraged to “have a go” at this from early on. Your child will then start to write simple sentences, to form letters correctly and to begin to notice punctuation marks and to use them. By the end of Reception, many children are able to produce a piece of readable independent writing with some basic punctuation, some words spelled correctly and spaces between words. By the end of Year 1, many children are able to produce several sentences with correctly formed letters, full stops and capital letters. By the end of Year 2, many children are able to produce several punctuated sentences with joined handwriting, question marks, noun phrases adjectives and conjunctions. As children progress through Years 1 & 2, they will encounter an increasing range of text types and learn more about how different forms of writing are structured and how punctuation affects how a piece of writing should be read. They will learn about the conventions of grammar, punctuation and spelling and will be encouraged to apply these in their writing. Your child will have many different things to try to include in their writing and should not be expected to perfect them all at once!

Contact and progress

We encourage you to use your child’s “Home School Diary” to communicate in a positive way about your child’s achievements. Teachers are always willing to answer any questions you may have about your child’s reading or any aspect of his/her learning.

Reading for Pleasure 

If you can encourage your child to read for pleasure, they will really reap the benefits. It might not seem like a particularly important task, but actually, research shows that reading for pleasure can be directly linked to children’s success throughout their time at school and even into adulthood.

Reading for pleasure opens up new worlds for children. It gives them the opportunity to use their imagination to explore new ideas, visit new places and meet new characters. Interestingly, reading for pleasure also improves children’s well-being and empathy. It helps them to understand their own identity, and gives them an insight into the world and the views of others.

In school we promote reading for pleasure by reading to the children, by adults and children recommending books. Each class has a reading scrapbook that the children take home to illustrate their recommendations. At the end of the year these are put in the library for other classes to share). We encourage individual as well as social reading in cosy book corners and nooks around the school. We encourage our parents to share in our reading for pleasure by being a secret reader. 

Here are some ideas for encouraging your child to read for pleasure

• Set aside a special time – just a few minutes a day is enough to create a reading habit.
• Get caught reading yourself – show that reading for pleasure is not just for children.
• Read to each other – if your child really doesn’t want to read on their own, then read together. You read a page, then they read a page. Or one of you could read any dialogue. Be brave and put on different voices.
• Value the books they choose to read – all reading is valuable for a child’s development. Some of us prefer non-fiction; some of us prefer comics. One child might like superhero books; another might a book of football statistics.
• Set a challenge – can they read ten books before they’re ten? Can they read a book from six different genres: a comic, an information book, a funny book, a sci-fi book, a classic and an instruction manual?
• Reading buddies – reading to a younger sibling can boost your child’s self-confidence and communication skills.
• Audiobooks – audiobooks allow children to experience a book above their own reading level. It also allows you to share a book together or make the most of those car journeys. Listening to a story over and over again can improve vocabulary and encourage deeper comprehension
• Read-a-thon – join a sponsored reading event to raise money for charity.
• Stage and screen – use your child’s favourite films or games as a springboard into reading. Knowing the characters and storyline can be a helpful bridge into reading a longer story.
• Book club – find out about local book clubs.

If you would like any further information about reading at Ashurst Wood please contact your class teacher.