Phonics
At Cockton Hill Junior School, we follow the Sounds~Write programme for phonics, enabling smooth progression from the work at Cockton Hill Infants’ School. Phonics is a way of teaching children how to read and write. It helps children hear, identify and use different sounds that distinguish one word from another in the English language. The Sounds~Write programme works by beginning with the sound and then moving to the written code (beginning with the initial code and moving to the extended code) that represent sounds.
The Sounds~Write programme teaches the conceptual knowledge needed for reading and writing:
- Letters are symbols
- A sound may be spelled by 1, 2, 3 or 4 letters
- The same sound can be spelled in more than one way
- Many spellings can represent more than one sound.
It also teaches the skills needed for reading and writing:
- Blending: the ability to push sounds together to build words
- Segmenting: the ability to pull apart the individual sounds in words
- Phoneme manipulation: the ability to insert sounds into and delete sounds out of words
Reading
Once the crucial skills of word recognition are secured through phonics teaching children are encouraged to read fluently and automatically allowing them to concentrate on the meaning of the text. This balance between word recognition and language comprehension shifts as children acquire secure and automatic decoding skills and progress from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ for purpose and pleasure.
We use The Oxford Reading tree scheme across school to support our children in developing their reading skills. The books are banded according to their level of difficulty, providing children with a challenging reading experience, which also allows them to use their developing whole word knowledge to read independently.
The Oxford Reading tree scheme comprises of a mixture of Fiction, Non-fiction and Traditional Tales, which allows children to experience a variety of texts. We also have a range of Bug Club and Project X books available to children across school.
Reading lessons and whole class reading sessions are taught regularly where children are given the opportunity to develop their fluency, vocabulary, inference and comprehension skills. During these sessions, children are given the opportunity to read independently, with a partner or teacher. Class novels alongside standalone texts from all genres are used across school to support the development of comprehension skills. If children are working below their chronological reading age, targeted intervention and support is put in place.
A comprehensive library of texts is available to support children to develop high levels of reading skill and to read with confidence, fluency and good understanding. We encourage children to read a wide range of books giving practice and broadening knowledge before moving forward in challenge. We encourage reading for pleasure and enjoyment of reading individually, in pairs and in groups.
Children read in a wide range of contexts across the school day and are taught the mechanics of reading alongside the skills of comprehension and understanding. We ask parents to read with their child at least 3 times a week, spending quality time and enjoying books together. Children each have an individual reading record and school reading book. We expect parents to support children in their individual reading programmes and complete the home school reading record weekly.
