Reading and Phonics

Form the moment your child arrives at St Mary's they start their reading journey and YOU are a very vital part of that journey.

We are passionate about reading and truly believe every child is a reader.

You can help by reading books to your child daily and as they start their phonic lessons they will begin to bring grapheme flash cards and word cards home, please encourage them to read them daily. Soon your child will be bring books home and now the magic starts to happen...

Why is Phonics Taught?

Teaching children to read is an essential part of their learning. Reading is a skill that helps to develop vocabulary and improve understanding of words. In synthetic phonics lessons, children learn the relationship between letters and sounds. Teaching them to recognise the sounds each letter makes and how to put them together, enables them to read. It also helps with spelling as they learn how to break up words into sounds, in order to spell them. The idea that surrounds synthetic phonics is that once they are comfortable with the letters and sounds that make up words, children should even be able to read ‘nonsense’ words that don’t actually exist in the English language.

Phonics

At St Mary’s we have implemented the Twinkl Phonics DFE approved programme which is a coherently planned sequence of lessons that
supports the effective teaching of phonics within EYFS, KS1 and, where appropriate, KS2.

Level 1 Twinkl Phonics provides themed teaching packs for our Nursery Teacher to deliver each of the DfE’s Phase 1 phonics aspects. Throughout Level 1, young learners develop the knowledge, skills and understanding to discriminate between and use auditory, environmental and instrumental sounds. Level 1 is taught in the EYFS and runs throughout the teaching of phonics Levels 2-6.

In Reception, children work within Levels 2-4. Here learners are introduced to phonemes/sounds and graphemes/letters systematically. They also learn to develop and apply blending and segmenting skills for reading and writing.

Within KS1, children work within Levels 5 and 6. The coherently planned sequence of lessons within Level 5 allows Year 1 opportunities for children to apply their phonics knowledge and skills as the prime approach to reading and spelling. It focuses on phonetically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words and the alternative ways of pronouncing and representing the long vowel phonemes. Furthermore, children will develop their ability to attempt to read and spell increasingly complex words. By Level 6, Year 2 children explore spelling patterns and grammar while also developing a breadth of knowledge, skills and understanding in the recognition and spelling of common exception words.

The Twinkl Phonics Programme intends to not only provide children with opportunities to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding
essential for reading and writing, but also, to develop each child’s confidence, resilience and engagement in phonics lessons and a love for
reading and writing.

Reading

At St Mary’s, we intend for our children to leave Year 6 as fluent, confident readers who understand the importance of reading on their immediate and future lives. We intend for them to leave having read a rich variety of fiction and non-fiction literature ranging from: graphic novels, classic texts and magazines to comics, poems and modern stories. We intend for them to develop such an enjoyment for reading that they leave as avid readers choosing to read for pleasure and to read to learn.​

We intend for our children to leave having participated in an array of quality book-related experiences and have acquired the linguistic skills in order to be able to discuss, evaluate, reflect, compare, critique and engage in meaningful conversations about a wide range of literature in order to form an opinion.​

Our intention is that all children experience a progressive, ambitious and challenging curriculum built upon a foundation of diverse and carefully selected literature – a curriculum which develops children’s word recognition and language comprehension alongside developing a genuine desire to read for pleasure. It is our intent that every child at St Mary’s will connect with a book and has the opportunity to see themselves represented through literature inline.​

It is our intention that St Mary’s is a school which is built on books because we place reading at the heart of everything. We intend that reading will not only strengthen the core knowledge rooted with our writing and wider curriculums but will also play an important role in educating the whole child emotionally, culturally, socially and spiritually.