Charford First School
Reading
The National Curriculum states: A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know.
Reading
At Charford, we believe that reading is a key life skill and are dedicated to enabling our children to become life-long readers. Reading unlocks the future and opens up a world ‘Where everyone is someone’.
We aim to develop a love of reading and provide a curriculum where children learn to read, and read to learn.
The Reading Policy can be found in the Policies and Documents Library.
How do we teach children to read?
In the Early Years and Key Stage 1, the children are taught to read primarily through daily, discrete phonics sessions following the ‘Phonics Shed’ programme.
The Phonics Shed programme is narrative based, with lots of fun and engaging characters, songs and stories to help develop a love of reading and writing. It is split into four chapters and is mostly used from ages 3 to 7.
Phonics
What is phonics?
Phonics is a method of learning to read. It teaches the children to decode words by recognising the letters and the sounds they make, and then blending these sounds together to read the words.
Progression of Reading Skills
Throughout school all children engage in regular reading sessions, using high quality texts, to develop both word-reading and comprehension skills. Please refer back to the reading policy for more information.
The National Curriculum Programmes of study have been organised into long term plans and knowledge organisers for each year group;
Long Term Plans
Reading at Home
We value parents in supporting us, to continue the reading journey at home. Our home reading books use a variety of schemes to enable the children in becoming confident and fluent readers. They are colour-coded and organised to closely match the children’s stage of development. The children are able to move through these at their own pace.
Boom Reader
We use Boom Reader to record reading at home and in school. Below is some information about the app.