Reading

Reading Intent

The aim of our Reading curriculum is to equip our pupils with the skills needed to discriminate individual sounds, decode text and derive meaning from their reading. We also aim to develop their enjoyment of reading, stories and texts.

We base our approach to teaching reading on The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) where Decoding (D) x Language Comprehension (LC) = Reading Comprehension (RC).

Through daily, systematic and consistent high quality phonics teaching, pupils learn to decode, blend and segment in order to support their spelling ability and fluently read a range of texts.

Our reading curriculum equips pupils to:

    • Develop their listening and communication skills (Level 1 Phonics)
    • Decode as soon as they have developed sufficient phonological awareness
    • Develop language comprehension skills (the ability to derive meaning from the spoken word)
    • Develop reading comprehension skills (when pupils can decode text and have sufficient language comprehension abilities)

Reading Implementation

All pupils access daily phonics teaching and are taught Level 1 and 2 phonics following the Twinkl phonics programme.

All pupils are assessed on a half termly basis, which determines the route to best outcomes, taking into account each pupil’s individual barriers to learning.

We offer accelerated and supplementary interventions to ensure that pupils make the best possible progress.

Phonics - Level 1

Phonics - Level 2

Phonics - Key Word Definitions

Accelerated Intervention

Our accelerated intervention is for pupils who are making rapid progress and remaining in class would limit or slow their progress. Our intervention is multisensory, structured, cumulative and sequential.

Our accelerated intervention is delivered one to one or in small groups by our specialist Literacy team. This means that pupils can progress through the intervention at their own speed.

The intervention uses a multi sensory approach to teach reading and spelling in a systematic and memorable way.

We introduce each new sound individually, using all four modalities (visual, oral, auditory and kinaesthetic) to maximise learning and the transfer of skills and knowledge to long term memory.

Our word reading and word spelling is always in structure, so that pupils are not asked to do anything that they haven’t been taught to do.

Retention occurs because we practise each new letter and sound to mastery before moving on, and by overlearning through playing games, both in school and at home.
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Supplementary Interventions

Whole word reading

We use the POPS Scheme which works well for pupils with a diagnosis of autism and Downs Syndrome.

This is an approach which has been recommended by our Educational Psychologists and is proving very successful with cohorts where there are particular auditory and oral barriers to learning.

Comprehension Programme

Some of our pupils, particularly those with a diagnosis of autism, may find decoding relatively easy but struggle with language comprehension. For these pupils, we use a specialist Autism and Reading Comprehension programme which helps them to understand the meaning of everyday vocabulary, follow one and two step instructions and develop sentence building skills.

Reading Impact

Our reading curriculum equips our pupils with the skills needed to decode and understand the written word. This includes the ability to understand spoken language and develop an enjoyment of reading and texts that will last a lifetime.

Progress in reading is assessed through our English assessment system which ensures small steps of progress are evidenced, shared with parents and celebrated.

Learning is evidenced on Evidence for Learning and is linked to our assessment system and individual pupils Personal Learning Goals (PLG’s).

Half Termly meetings between class teachers and our core learning lead ensure that progress doesn’t slow or stop and interventions can be swiftly put in place to ensure each pupil is given the best possible chance of learning to read.