Reading and Phonics
Intent
At Vittoria Primary School, we are determined that all children join our community of readers. We believe that the ability to read fluently and with confidence is an essential tool in empowering our pupils in every stage of their learning at primary school and beyond. We intend for every child to leave Vittoria Primary School with the skills to read and understand a wide range of genres for pleasure and for information across every subject.
Implementation
Word reading and comprehension are the building blocks of reading for pleasure and for information.
Reading for pleasure
- Children are read to daily and have access to class reading corners that are well stocked with age appropriate fiction and nonfiction texts.
- Children are empowered to choose their own texts for home reading and encouraged to explore a range of genres.
Word reading
- Word reading is taught through the RWI systematic synthetic phonics programme.
- RWI begins in Nursery where children are exposed to pure sounds and oral blending throughout the day with talk and games.
- Children from Reception to Year 2 have daily RWI phonics lessons until they become confident, accurate readers.
- Children are assessed at least every six weeks to ensure they are receiving the correct level of support and challenge in their reading.
- Children working below age expected levels are quickly identified and receive phonics tutoring to ensure they continue to make progress.
- Parent workshops and video lessons empower parents and carers to support their child’s phonics learning at home.
Comprehension
- Once children are confident, accurate readers, we teach comprehension skills using the Islington Whole Class Reading (WCR) approach in Years 1-6.
- Texts from the CLPE Power of Reading recommendations are carefully selected to ensure that children read high-quality texts across a range of genres.
- Teachers embed strategies from CLPE Power of Reading teaching sequences to boost engagement and oracy in reading.
- Through daily comprehension lessons, children are taught to make predictions, explain words, retrieve information, infer meaning, sequence events, summarise passages, consider an author’s choices, and identify themes within and across texts.
- Children are supported to read across the curriculum and topic-linked texts are available for children to explore.
Impact
The impact of our reading curriculum is measured via pupil voice, non-statutory and statutory reading assessments.
EYFS
- Children read and understand simple sentences.
KS1
- Pupil voice to understand reading for pleasure.
- Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 1.
- Half-termly RWI assessments.
- PM Benchmarking for fluent readers.
- Termly PIRA reading assessments.
- Optional KS1 Reading SATS.
KS2
- Pupil voice to understand reading for pleasure.
- PM Benchmarking.
- Termly PIRA reading assessments.
- KS2 Reading SATS.
