Miss Poilblanc
English and Reading Lead

 

At Perton Primary Academy, we believe that reading is an essential life skill; it is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves. We are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent approach to the teaching of reading in order to close any gaps and to target the highest possible number of children attaining the expected standard or higher. At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise imaginative stories and thought provoking texts. Our curriculum is delivered through RWI synthetic phonics (see below for Early Reading), a linked approach to VIPERS shared and guided reading, home reading, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading and hearing quality texts read aloud every day. All of these are essential components as they offer the range of opportunities needed to develop fluent, enthusiastic and critical readers.  

Reading Overview

Early Reading at Perton Primary Academy.

At Perton Primary Academy, we strive to teach children to read effectively and quickly using the Read Write Inc. Phonics.

In Read Write Inc. Phonics pupils will learn to:

  • Decode letter-sound correspondences quickly and effortlessly, using their phonic knowledge and skills
  • Learn to blend words together.
  • Read common exception words on sight
  • Read texts and words that are within their phonics capabilities as early as possible.
  • Understand what they read
  • Read aloud with fluency and expression
  • Spell quickly and easily by segmenting the sounds in words

Teaching of Read Write Inc will:

  • Be pitched at the correct level for each child, ensuring every child is sufficiently challenged while able to make clear progress.
  • Excite and stimulate children through active learning in which they enjoy achieving and progressing
  • Uses phonics, reading and writing skills together to connect and support each of these aspects
  • Encourages consistency of teaching and learning across the school in this area
  • Accelerates children’s literacy learning leading to improvements in attainment, both in relation to the Phonics Screening Check in Year 1 and throughout the school.

How do we teach it?

A daily phonics lesson is timetabled for children to practise skills needed for reading and writing. The children are grouped according to their knowledge of the graphemes and phonemes in the English language and their reading ability.

Speed sound sessions

Children will learn between 2-3 sounds a week. They will say the sounds using pure sounds and will review previously taught sounds. Children will use 3 strategies to read new words; ‘Spot the Special Friends, Fred Talk, Read the word’. The children will have the opportunity to become speedy reader by reading words as quickly as possible with ‘Fred Talk in your head’. Children will use Fred Fingers to help the spell words; they will count the sounds, pinch the sounds and write the sounds.

Reading sessions

Accuracy is developed through: 

  • Reading new sounds and previously taught sounds
  • Sounding out the names of characters and unfamiliar words
  • Understanding the meaning of new words
  • Reading the story

Fluency is developed through: 

  • Reading the words in the story speedily
  • Teaching the story, ‘jumping in’ when the teacher allows
  • Reading the story with increased speed

Comprehension is developed through: 

  • Predicting the outcomes after listening to story introduction
  • Discussing and comparing key moments in the story
  • Reading the story with a storyteller’s voice
  • Answering questions about the story.
  • Asking questions related to the reading VIPERS.

How do we assess? 

Children are assessed every six weeks in school on their grapheme-phoneme correspondences and their reading of the text. This is to ensure that the phonics group that they are in, is closely matched with their phonic knowledge. On-going assessments are also used to identify children that may need additional support. When pupils are successful at completing the final Read Write Inc Phonics assessment, they will then progress to Read Write Inc Spellings. Our aim is to ensure that children progress in-line with the National Curriculum expectations

Talk Through Stories is taught to Reception children. It is designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary so that they can understand the books they will soon be able to read for themselves.

That is why it is so important to plan specifically and systematically – step by step – to develop their vocabulary.

How talk through stories works

In Story week, we help children to get to know the story well: the plot, the characters, and their actions and motives.

In Vocabulary week, we focus on eight words from the story. These are words that children are unlikely to hear in everyday conversation but are likely to come across in stories. Children’s understanding of each word is then developed in the context of their everyday lives.

How do we teach it? 

 

As outlined below, our implementation of reading for the children at Perton Academy starts with our SSP approach using RWI. From year 1 – 4, our whole class and guided reading sessions balance the teaching of reading between word reading, wider decoding skills, grammar for reading, wider comprehension strategies and response to text in order to develop fluent readers who understand what they are reading.

 

Pupils complete 4 VIPERS session per week in Year 2- 4. In Year 1, pupils complete a VIPERS session every Friday. Here the children develop the skills needed for reading, Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Sequence/Summarise.

 

Teachers explicitly develop children’s vocabulary and retrieval skills daily while also focusing on other skills through each text. We continue to expose children to a range of high-quality texts in addition to those that inspire writing to ensure the children have a wide range of genres, stories and poetry in their reading repertoire.

Here is an overview of the quality texts used across Year 1-4.