Reading
Reading is both a personal joy and an intrinsic part of modern work and life. We want all children at St. Mary’s to be confident and fluent readers whose lives are enhanced and made easier by gaining this essential skill.
We firmly believe that reading is not simply decoding text; children need to be able to understand and use what they read, so we encourage children to read as widely as possible from cereal packets and road signs to visiting their local library and choosing books to read from a variety of authors and genres. Children who enjoy reading, and see their families enjoying it, do better in other subjects as well [IOE, University of London].
How is Reading Taught at St Mary's?
Reading is taught discretely through Phonics and comprehension sessions, individual reading (Oxford Reading Tree scheme and other books) to an adult as well as being embedded into the whole curriculum. The reading schemes are assessment tools for the teachers and should not comprise the whole reading experience for children. Please ensure that your child has access to a wide variety of books, comics, recipes, websites, packaging, games etc.
Phonics
In KS1 and Foundation Stage, Phonics is taught 3 times per week in Sound Station groups where children are at a similar phase. Children are taught to hear the phonemes (sounds) and record the graphemes (written sounds), learning the way similar sounds are written as well as ‘tricky’ words which do not follow spelling patterns.
For more information about Phonics please follow the link: http://www.getreadingright.co.uk/phoneme-pronunciation/
How Can I Help My Child with Phonics?
- Check that your child is saying words correctly; many phonic mistakes are due to children mispronouncing words, particularly those starting with ‘th’ and ‘f’ e.g. thought becomes fort.
- Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ or segment the words in their books, focusing on pronouncing the sounds correctly. http://www.getreadingright.co.uk/phoneme-pronunciation/
- Talk about what they have learnt in Sound Stations and try to find examples of word patterns that they are working on.
- Play with words and have fun!
- What happens if you put different sounds at the start or end of words?
- Make up silly sentences using one phoneme.
- Create an alphabet of animals or a different category.
- Play ‘I Spy’ using phonemes.