Reading and Phonics

As a school, we are focused on ensuring every learner is supported on their reading journey. This journey will enable all children to develop resilience and aspirations in learning to read, regardless of their background, ability or needs. For Phonics, we use Read Write Inc in KS1 and EYFS and this is well established. It has made a difference to children's sound knowledge, reading ability and fluency. We have clear expectations of pupils’ phonics progression and our school’s rigorous approach to phonics aligns with these expectations.

In Key Stage 2 and at the end of KS1, the VIPERS approach to reading comprehension is used with the use of Fresh Start for intervention groups. This enables all children to be supported and challenged to reach their full reading potential. This approach aims to develop their comprehension skills, focusing on the key areas; Vocabulary, Inference, Prediction, Explanation, Retrieval and Summary/Sequence. This is in the form of discrete lessons that concentrate on their reading, comprehension, discussion and creative skills via the VIPERS approach. Through these lessons, the children are exposed to a range of genres, including a variety of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction to expand their knowledge and vocabulary, which will enable them to apply this to their writing. Children are also exposed to and explore work by a variety of authors, which in turn develops and encourages their own writing style. During the teaching of reading, children are not only required to read but are read to. All teachers read stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction aloud to the children every day, which models high level vocabulary, language comprehension, fluency and expression to continue to develop the children’s love of reading.

We also encourage involvement from parents to share our intent for reading across the school. Parents and children have been asked to sign a homework agreement which asks them to agree to read at least 3 times a week and for this to be recorded in a diary provided by school, so that a love for learning continues at home and children can share this enjoyment with their parents. This regular support at home will further consolidate and develop reading and comprehension skills learnt at school. In KS1 we provide a target reading book that matches the reading level of that individual child and links to their corresponding phonics group. They also go home with a copy of the focus book from their lessons which enables them to continue to practise and consolidate the focus sounds and build on their fluency and expression at home.

In KS2, we use Accelerated Reader. This helps us to effectively and regularly assess the children’s reading and comprehension ability through termly assessments. Book quizzes are also completed when children complete a book of their choice, which provides additional information on each individual’s reading strengths and areas for improvement. From these assessments, children select a book from our school library at their appropriate book level. Our library has been organised to enable children to be independent in this task. Our children are actively encouraged to read these books to their parents at home and discuss the characters, plot and make predictions about what might happen next.

• RWI Expected Progress 

• RWI Progression of Skills

• VIPERS Progression of Skills