Reading at Farne

The school believes that encouraging children to read for enjoyment is key to their success as a reader. Teachers choose potent texts that will excite the children and motivate them to want to read more.

In order for children in the Foundation Stage and Key Stage One to become successful, independent readers, they need to process a variety of reading skills and knowledge. These include:

·         familiarity with syntax (sentence structure and grammatical arrangement)

·         good familiarity with the genre of stories

·         good auditory memory

·         recognition of letters and their sounds

·         knowledge of the grapho-phonic construction of words

Our Approach to Reading

At Farne Primary School, we believe in developing a reading culture throughout the school by creating welcoming book areas in all classrooms, by providing a recently refurbished school library hosting a variety of books, and by raising the profile of reading through a print rich environment, attractive book displays and promoting the written word at all times. We also recognise that reading is a core tool for life and we aim to foster a love for reading in all of our pupils through inviting authors and story tellers into school to work with the children as well as by hosting creative reading competitions such as ‘reading in unusual places’.

Reading skills are taught through phonics, guided reading, reciprocal reading, peer reading, comprehension and shared reading across our whole curriculum.

Foundation Stage / Key Stage 1

Through reading, pupils are introduced to new vocabulary that can then be used in their own writing and speech. We foster our love of reading through providing a rich environment which stimulates and encourages children’s reading. We believe in engaging all pupils and have a variety of resources in each class including puppets, story sacks, role play resources and books to develop different interests of the children. From the Foundation Stage and into Key Stage 1 pupils will enjoy a range of texts allowing them to build up knowledge of rhythm, rhyme and pattern in language.

What scheme do we use?

We use a range of books from different reading schemes, to ensure our pupils engage in a breadth and depth of types of fiction and non fiction. Some of these schemes are: Songbirds, Floppy’s Phonics, Project X, Rigby Rockets and Oxford Reading Tree. Older pupils in the school will also have the choice of more challenging reading books from our school library.

Phonics

Using RWI, the children learn to read effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into comprehending what they read. It also allows them to spell effortlessly so that they can put all their energy into composing what they write.

When using RWI to read the children will:

• learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts
• learn to read words using Fred Talk
• read lively stories featuring words they have learned to sound out
• show that they comprehend the stories by answering questions.

When using RWI to write the children will:

• learn to write the letters/letter groups which represent 44 sounds.
• learn to write words by saying the sounds in Fred Talk
• write simple sentences
• compose stories based on picture strips
• compose a range of stories based on writing frames.

Where to find out more information

http://www.oup.com/oxed/primary/rwi/forparents/

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/

Speed Sound Pronunciation Video

https://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/

Our school uses:

• Read Write Inc. Phonics for our children in Nursery to Year 2 and for our children in Years 3 and 4 who need to catch up

Read Write Inc. Phonics is used by over a quarter of the UK’s primary schools. It is a comprehensive literacy programme, weaving decoding, comprehension, writing and spelling together seamlessly. Ruth Miskin developed the programme during her time as a headteacher in Tower Hamlets. She believes that in order for a school to be successful, every headteacher needs to adopt a consistent whole-school approach to teaching reading, writing and spelling. Fidelity to the teaching programme, rigorous assessment, tracking and one-to-one tutoring ensure that schools guarantee progress for every child.

For information and tutorials on how to support your child learning to read go to:
https://www.ruthmiskin.com/en/

Key Stage 2

Through independent reading, reading skills lessons, shared reading in literacy lessons and cross-curricular sessions, guided reading groups and reading for pleasure, reading in Key Stage 2 develops and extends the skills acquired in Key Stage 1. Children explore a wide variety of genre, both fiction and non-fiction which allows them to access, input ideas and understand what they are reading. They are given opportunities to speculate on the tone and purpose of texts they explore as well as consider both the texts’ themes and audience.

If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact your child's class teacher or ring the school office.