Reading is at the heart of everything we do at Sitwell Infants. It is so much more than being able to read what is written on a page. Reading equips children for a place in the world. It feeds their imagination and develops their creativity. It can take them to new places and discover new things. It can forge the identity of their personality and shape the person they become.

It is our intention that every child will be a reader and our ambitious curriculum has been intentionally designed to achieve this. We have a systematic approach to phonics from the moment a child steps foot in our school. As soon as a child is ready, they move onto our comprehension teaching where their understanding of texts is deepened. Underpinning all of this, is nurturing a child’s love of reading; ensuring they have high-quality texts, carefully chosen to engage the children.

PHONICS

As soon as a child enters our early years, they are taught phonics immediately as no time is wasted sending each child on their reading journey. Our children learn to read and write effectively and quickly using the Read Write Inc. Phonics programme. 

In Read Write Inc. Phonics we teach children to:

• Decode letter-sound correspondences quickly and effortlessly, using their phonic knowledge and skills
• Read common exception words on sight
• Understand what they read
• Read aloud with fluency and expression
• Spell quickly and easily by segmenting the sounds in words

Progression in knowledge and skills

Read Write Inc. uses a systematic approach to Phonics to help children to learn to read and write. Children learn new sounds daily - these are letters and the most common sound that they make. When they have developed their knowledge of several sounds, they then begin to put these sounds together to make words. This is called blending. Blending is a very important milestone in children's reading because once they can hear the sounds in words and blend the sounds together to make words, they are ready to access books and begin to read independently.

A big part of Phonics involves children initially partaking in oral blending. This is where they are given a series of sounds in quick succession and must orally blend these together to make a word. For example, given the sounds m a t, the child will be able to orally blend these sounds and hear the word mat. Once they are able to do this, they can begin to use this process to read the sounds that printed letters make and blend them together to read the whole word.

In Read Write Inc, oral blending and sounding out is called FRED TALK. Children are introduced to Fred - a puppet who can only speak in sounds (Fred Talk) and must help him to blend his sounds together to make words. Whenever, we sound out, we call this Fred Talk to help the children to remember the process.

As children become more confident in oral blending and blending letters, the next step is called FRED IN YOUR HEAD. This is where the children use their sounding out (Fred Talk) to read words but instead of doing this out loud (orally), they do it mentally. This follows the same process (e.g. d o g -> dog) but takes place internally and so the process is silent. Eventually, children will become much quicker at using Fred in your Head and will no longer need to spend as much time Fred Talking each word; developing fluency in their reading because of this.

In Read Write Inc, children are shown Green words and Red words. Green Words are words which can be read by children using their phonics skills (Fred Talk and Fred in Your Head). Red words are words whose patterns differ and cannot be read accurately using their current phonics skills (for example, the, where 'th' can be read normally but the 'e' makes more of an 'uh' sound). Children learn to read and write these Red (common exception) words by sight so that they do not need to Fred Talk them. In Read Write Inc sessions, children will be given regular access to green and red word flash cards to increase their fluency and ability to sight-read an increasing range of words.

In addition to the above, during Read Write Inc lessons, we teach children to work effectively with a partner to explain and consolidate what they are learning. This provides the teacher with opportunities to assess learning and to pick up on difficulties, such as pupils’ poor articulation, or problems with blending or alphabetic code knowledge.

We group all children homogeneously, according to their progress in reading rather than their writing. This is because it is known that children's progress in writing will lag behind progress in reading, especially for those whose motor skills are less well developed.

COMPREHENSION

Phonics is the building blocks to reading; the tools the children need to decode words. Comprehension is the understanding of the words they are reading.

Once a child has mastered phonics, they are moved onto the scheme Cracking Comprehension. We deliberately chose this as it has high quality texts from such authors as Dick-King Smith, Michael Morpurgo and William Shakespeare. The software also enables teachers to visually explain the process of scanning through a text to find evidence and how to convert that into a full answer.

There are 18 units for each year group that are taught over two weeks. During each unit, children will read the text aloud, read it silently, read it with a partner, echo read, listen to the teacher read and listen to the software’s audio version. A large portion of time is spent looking at new or challenging vocabulary and giving the children strategies to comprehend these words.

READING FOR PLEASURE

RWI and Cracking Comprehension help our children learn to read and understand what they read but to truly develop the love of reading, we believe in our reading principles:

• Adults as reading role models:
  • Children look to the adults within schools as their role models. They should see us as readers and we should engage with the children and share our reading habits and our love for reading.
• Engage parents in reading with their child:
  • We have carefully designed home reading activities to allow all parents to engage with their child’s reading at home.
• Celebrate children’s reading successes:
  • Reading Diaries should be filled in every week and if children read at least three times each week, they get a stamp. Once they have six stamps, they win a prize from Mrs Peart's special reading prize box!
  • Free books are given as rewards for a range of events in school, as well as their Christmas present every year. 
• Keep reading high profile all year round:
  • Regular assemblies are run by our English leaders, and every Monday assembly is Diversity Assembly, where Mrs Peart shares a book each week linked to an important world issue. 
  • Reading Diaries are collected in weekly and stamped to collect prizes. 
• Offer a broad reading diet:
  • Children are not going to enjoy every book they read. It is essential we offer a wider range of books that children have access to. We strongly believe there is the right book for even the most reticent of readers.
  • We develop 'Recommended Reads' that link with our overall theme each half term. These are available for all classes to choose and read during story time each day. 
  • Each year group has a 'Reading Spine' with key texts that staff in school have chosen that we want all children to be exposed to during the year. These books cover a range of genres including poetry, non-fiction, modern picture books, classic picture books and diverse books which ensures our children see themselves represented in stories.

READING AT HOME

When a child turns 18, they will have spent between 9-13% of their waking life in a classroom. For every hour we have a child in school, their parents have them for ten. The importance of children reading at home is crucial to their development as readers.

Reading Diaries:

At Sitwell Infant School, we had our own reading diary designed and tailored to our needs. The expectation is our children read at least three times a week at home and record it in their diaries. 

Diaries are checked every week by the class teacher or teaching assistant. 

Parent Partnership:

We highly value the parents and carers within our community. We know they want the absolute best for their children and will help anyway they can. We offer support for parents and carers in the following ways:

• Training Videos: regular Read, Write Inc. training for parents to help them support their children at home. Sessions are recorded by the class teachers so parents can access at a time convenient to them.
• Virtual Schools: Once a week, the classroom teachers share a video online with parents that shows the sounds they have been learning that week. These videos are produced by RWI and they are of an incredibly high quality. Children are expected to watch one of these videos a week at home with a parent.