Reading and Phonics
Reading is central to the school’s curriculum.
Children in the Nursery Year develop their vocabulary and listening skills well. The teaching of phonics starts as soon as children join the Reception Year. Leaders have implemented an ambitious curriculum that introduces pupils to phonics in a systematic way. Staff deliver this curriculum well, and they assess pupils’ reading skills accurately. Teachers ensure that pupils learn phonics in a well-ordered manner.
Adults quickly identify any pupils at risk of falling behind in their phonics knowledge. Staff give these pupils timely and effective support. Teachers provide lots of opportunities for pupils to read or to listen to stories. This improves pupils’ knowledge and understanding of vocabulary.
In key stage 2, well-designed reading sessions expose pupils to lots of different types of books. Pupils talked with enthusiasm about the books that they have read. This has helped to promote pupils’ love of reading.
- Ofsted, March 2023
Phonics at Manor Primary School
At Manor Primary School, we teach a high quality, daily, discrete spelling session from Foundation to Year 6. Primarily, we follow the National Curriculum and we use Rocket Phonics synthetic sound programme in early years and Key Stage one. Phonics and spelling is taught whole class and there are phonic/reading interventions used to help catch the children up.
The children are assessed daily in each lesson and also tracked half termly. We use a phonics tracking tool in EYFS and KS1 to identify next steps in learning.
We provide workshops to support parents and provide them with information and activities to help their child at home.
From June 2012, year one children are formally assessed by an unseen government test and results are reported to parents. It is a decoding test using 'real and non-real' words.
Reading at Manor Primary School
Learning to read is complex yet essential for all our children's life chances. Reading relies on us learning many different cues such as:
- structure - how sentences are formed, grammar & syntax;
- meaning - it relies on us having an understanding of the world around us to make meaning (semantic cues);
- Pictorial - we need to know about illustrations, graphs, pictures, captions and headings (bibliographic cues) and
- graphophonic cues - those supplied by spelling and presentation of words, which interact with knowledge of words and phonic analysis.
Children read in as many situations as possible, not just in reading lessons. Reading takes place in all lessons.
Reading is taught through guided reading sessions as well as individual reading. We use a range of strategies to teach reading and foster a love of reading including reading buddies, timetabled library time, Sit and Listen sessions and reading scrapbooks.
Reading Schemes
We use a variety of reading scheme texts to ensure children learn and apply a range of reading strategies. We endeavour to purchase/provide books/texts that engage boys and girls and their interests as well as allow children to see their realities reflected in the books they read.
Our book organisation system includes a coloured band which correspond to reading levels. Each level has carefully chosen words, phrases, phonics, and comprehension.
Parents are encouraged to hear their child read at least three times per week as a minimum and return their reading bag and log to school.
Pupils have a range of schemes to help them develop their reading skills. Our main scheme is 'Rocket Phonics'-this is phonic based and pupils are given books according to their phonic ability. We also have e-books which children can access at home.
Each class has a set of book boxes with books that have been chosen carefully for the children's reading ability. In Key Stage two children can choose books from the class reading area or library to read independently.
Please see the English Curriculum page for more information about phonics and reading.