Reading
At Leigh Central we endeavour to create a love for reading and know that the benefits of being able to read to a high standard is one of the most important things in a child’s life. We want every child to leave Leigh Central with the skills of an excellent reader. We aim to create and inspire readers who:
• Have an excellent phonic knowledge and skills.
• Fluency and accuracy in reading across a wide range of contexts throughout the curriculum
• Knowledge of an extensive and rich vocabulary.
• An excellent comprehension of texts.
• Love reading for pleasure and discuss a range of authors and different text types.
• Enjoy using books for research and study.
• Build up core knowledge through having read a rich and varied range of texts.
From the minute children enter Leigh Central they will be exposed to a love of reading. Phonetic knowledge is developed through structured daily lessons in EYFS and KS1 which allows children to apply their phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words.
Children have a daily structured Synthetic Phonics lesson. As a school we folow the Letters and Sounds approach where the knowledge and acquisition of sounds are broken into 6 phases -
Phase One -
Aspect 1 - Environmental Sounds
Aspect 2 - Instrumental Sounds
Aspect 3 - Body Percussion
Aspect 4 - Rhythm and Rhyme
Aspect 5 - Alliteration
Aspect 6 - Voice Sounds
Aspect 7 - Orally Blending and Segmenting
Within Phase One children will explore a range of different sounds within words and will learn to differentiate between these. Within Aspect 7 children will learn to hear the individual sounds that are used within a word eg - c-a-t makes cat. They will segment the individual sounds within the words and blend them back together to read the word as a whole. It is important that children can confidently orally blend and segment the sounds within words before they are introduced to the letters which represent these sounds within Phase 2.
Phase Two -
Within this phase children will learn at least 19 letter sounds. This phase will move children on from oral blending and segmentation to blending and segmenting with letters.
Phase Three -
The purpose of this phase to teach the next 25 graphemes (letters) most of which comprise of 2 letters (sh, ng etc)
Phase Four -
No new letter sounds are taught within this phase. It's purpose is to consolidate children's knowledge of graphemes when reading and spelling words. Children will practise reading and writing a range of words -
CVC words - cat, log, moon (words with 3 sounds)
CVCC words - tent, lamp, bolt (words with 4 sounds)
CCVC words - snail, brick, spoon (words with 4 sounds)
It is expected that most children will have completed letters and Sounds up to Phase 3 or 4 ready to enter Year 1.
Phase 5 -
Throughout Year 1 -
Reading -
- Teach further graphemes for reading
- Teach alternative pronuncuations for graphemes
- Practise reading a range of high frequency words, 2/3 syllable words and sentences
Spelling -
- Teaching alternative spellings for phonemes (sounds within words eg - ai, a_e, ay)
- Practise spelling a range of high frequency words, 2/3 syllable words and writing sentences
Phase 6 -
Throughout Year 2 -
Spelling -
- Teaching how to spell words in the past tense
- Learning how to add suffixes
- Spelling long words
- Finding and learning the difficult bits within words
- Learning and practising spellings
Reading -
Throughout this phase children become fluent and accurate readers. Within this phase children are expected to de-code words quickly and silently because their sounding and blending routine is now well established.
In KS1 the children begin their reading journey using a range of books taken from the Oxford Reading Tree Scheme including the Floppy Phonics series. This is then complimented within our Guided Reading Sessions by books from the Phonic Bug Scheme. This is a fun phonic based programme that teaches children how to read. This then progresses to the Lighthouse reading scheme which incorporates fiction and non-fiction texts. Texts are colour coded to denote different stages of reading and help children to develop their reading skills.
As they develop as confident readers, children develop comprehension skills through our reciprocal reading model of guided reading. This allows children to draw inferences from reading; predict details about what may happen in the text; question and retrieve information from a range of different text types and summarise the key events of what they have read.
In KS2 the children follow the Project X Guided Reading scheme. It is a very exciting and high impact scheme that addresses issues such as: phonics, comprehension, developing talk alongside early reading and writing interventions. We use the Code X scheme as a reading intervention for those children who need to revisit the foundations of reading within KS2.
By the time children leave Leigh Central we aim for them to be competent readers who can recommend books to their peers, have a thirst for reading a range of genres including poetry and participate in discussion about books including evaluating an author’s use of language and the impact this can have on the reader.