Maytree Nursery and Infant School

                            
C11 Phonics and Reading Policy

We believe reading underpins all other aspects of learning and is of vital importance. Reading has a high status at Maytree, with the successes from children and their progress regularly celebrated.
 

Aims:
 

• We aim to develop pupils' reading through systematic, synthetic phonics teaching, guided reading, home share books, and shared reading, individual reading and library access so that children will learn to read widely, fluently, frequently and with good understanding and pleasure.
• We aim to involve parents in improving their child’s reading through training workshops, school library, home-share diaries and phonemically progressive home-share books, including e-books with Bug Club.
• We aim that reading will have a high priority in school, promoting a good model of reading with expression, enjoyment and understanding, through daily shared reading of the school’s reading spine and access to books in an inviting reading area.
• We aim that all children have the opportunity to have a high quality text read to them every day in school. This is through the schools ‘Reading Spine’ which adults have access to in every classroom.

Phonics and Reading Teaching and Learning Aims:

Nursery - Foundation 1
Throughout the Nursery, our focus is around developing children’s language and communication skills through the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. Early matching, categorising and sorting activities within the Nursery environment are used to develop visual discrimination skills needed for early reading.
Books are shared daily in a small group; print has a high profile in the environment; school library is visited weekly; books are shared ‘over and over’.
Books are shared with the children daily and children are motivated to look at and talk about story and information books in their child initiated play by utilising books in all areas of the provision.
Each child takes home two library books every week to share at home with their families, over and over again.

Children are introduced to systematic, synthetic phonics through phase 1. This phase concentrates on developing children's speaking and listening skills and lays the foundations for the phonic work which starts in Phase 2. The emphasis during Phase 1 is to get children attuned to the sounds around them and ready to begin developing oral blending and segmenting skills.

Phase 1 is divided into seven aspects. These aspects are: General sound discrimination – environmental, General sound discrimination – instrumental sounds, General sound discrimination – body percussion, Rhythm and rhyme, Alliteration, Voice sounds and Oral Blending. Each aspect contains three strands: Tuning in to sounds (auditory discrimination), Listening and remembering sounds (auditory memory and sequencing) and Talking about sounds (developing vocabulary and language comprehension).

Each of the first six aspects are taught throughout the year. Children are provided with the opportunity for independent application of these first 6 skills through the enhanced and continuous provision provided by nursery. They are taught through a range of activities. Oral blending and segmenting is focused on during the end of the Summer Term, when children have had plenty of opportunity to develop their sound discrimination skills.

Reception Year - Foundation 2
As children progress into Foundation 2, an emphasis of phonics teaching will support children’s understanding that letters represent sounds in spoken words which will support their decoding of the printed word. ‘Letters and sounds’ will be used as a basis for a daily phonics session. In year R children consolidate phase 1 and then begin phase 2. By the end of the Year R most children will be confident in phase 3 and will be beginning to consolidate phase 2 and phase 3 through learning phase 4. Children are grouped depending on their phonemic ability and work through the phases progressively at a differentiated rate. These groupings are based upon regular assessments that assess the children’s phonemic understanding at their current phase.

An interest in books is developed by sharing songs, stories and rhymes, fostering opportunities to talk and re-enact stories or follow children’s interests through information books. Books are shared with the children daily (this is through the reading spine collection) and children are motivated to look at and talk about story and information books in their child initiated play by utilising books in all areas of the provision.

Each child takes home two reading books every week to share with their families over and over. Parents are encouraged to come and change their child’s reading book with them more regularly if they wish to do so. When parents are unable to do this support staff will assist.

In the spring term YR begin a differentiated guided reading program once a week following objectives from the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. During this time, children are supported by a teacher in small groups to develop their speaking, listening and reading skills. This is also an opportunity to promote positive reading and learning behaviours. It also promotes their vocabulary knowledge. Children’s progress is recorded in a guided reading folder. By the summer term all children are involved in guided reading.

Throughout child initiated learning time children have the opportunity to explore books of their own interest in quiet and inviting book corners. Books are changed regularly by the children at the School Library to enable ownership over their book corners.
 

Year 1
In Year 1 Children continue to work through the phonic phases of ‘Letters and Sounds’ with a daily differentiated phonics lesson and, in addition, there is a whole class Shared Reading session. Once a week the children have a guided read with an adult as part of a group in their phonics groups. Along with this once a week children take part in a guided read as part of a small group in class focusing on their fluency and comprehension skills at their level of reading.

Throughout Year 1 children are assessed on their current phonic phase half termly and are grouped accordingly.  These assessments are then used to inform planning. Different group’s planning is adapted to take into account graphemes that need to be revised (phase 2, 3 or 5 depending on their phonemic ability) and Common Exception Words (CEWs). Along with revision, new GPC (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence) and CEWs are taught in line with the phases’ long term overview.

Phonic lessons are taught using Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP). Children are taught a new grapheme daily as outlined in the Phonics Phase long term overviews. The children read from a book which features a page a day that covers graphemes that the children in that group are not secure with. Each day this phonics book is sent home for children to practise reading that day’s page at home. The practise allows opportunities for segmenting, blending and application of sounds in words and sentences.

Children take part in a small differentiated reading group each week, during their phonics lesson, using a book matched to their phonic ability. This book features a grapheme that has been taught during that week. These differentiated books are then sent home with the children for daily at home practise. They are also changed weekly.

When working in class reading a book matched to their phonic ability, the focus is on fluency and comprehension.   These sessions allow children to read text at a level appropriate to their phonic phase and build up their understanding of what constitutes a fluent reader. Teaching focuses on vocabulary, punctuation, intonation and pace.  Their fluency ability is determined by the ‘Fluency Rubric’ and teaching of fluency and targets will be taken from this and worked on during Guided Reading sessions.

Shared Reading takes place daily. Shared reading lessons have a high quality, vocabulary rich text at the heart of the session. These texts are taken from lists recommended by CLPE and the Local Authority training. The texts are planned to be progressive throughout the year. Shared Reading sessions encourage discussion around vocabulary, asking and answering of questions and inferencing around the chosen text in a whole class format. Progressive objectives are taken from the National Curriculum. A different group of children are taken daily for a guided read focusing on comprehension using a text at their reading level.

Daily Read-Aloud Story Time is developed through ‘the ‘Reading Spine’ books and cross curricular teaching as teachers support children’s understanding of more complex texts through discussion.

Children have opportunities when they come into school and throughout the day to explore books of their own interest in quiet and inviting book corners.
 

Year 2
As children progress into Year 2, phonics teaching continues to ensure children’s fluent decoding of new words to support their reading.

Children are placed into differentiated phonics groups for the teaching of phonics. These groupings are based on regular assessments of their current phonic phase.  These assessments are then used to inform planning. Different group’s planning is adapted to take into account graphemes that need to be revised (phase 2, 3 or 5 depending on their phonemic ability) and Common Exception Words (CEWs). Along with revision, new GPC (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence) and CEWs are taught in line with the phases’ long term overview.

They are taught using the teaching style of SSP (Systematic Synthetic Phonics). Children are taught a new GPC (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence) daily as outlined in the Phonics Phase long term overviews. The children read from a book designed by their phonics teacher which features a page a day that covers graphemes that the children in that group are not secure with. Each day this phonics book is sent home for children to practise reading that day’s page at home. Many children in Year 2 are working within Phase 6 and the focus is on understanding the use of a range of suffixes. Children also focus on understanding the rules for adding suffixes to root words to support them with spelling.

Children take part in small group guided reading sessions during phonics lessons each week. They read with their phonics teacher and are grouped according to their phonic ability. This ability is determined by phonics assessments completed half termly. The book that they read with their phonics teachers is matched to their phonic ability and features a GPC (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence) that they have been taught during that week. During this guided reading time the children also focus on their fluency when reading. They learn to understand what constitutes a fluent reader. Teaching focuses on vocabulary, punctuation, intonation and pace.  Their fluency ability is determined by the ‘Fluency Rubric’ and teaching of fluency and targets will be taken from this and worked on during Guided Reading sessions. These differentiated books are then sent home with the children and are changed weekly. Children who are working within Phase 6 are given book banded books from Turquoise level upwards. These books are picked to feature suffixes and spelling patterns which have been taught during that week. Children working within phase 6 also focus on deriving meaning from what they read, either in the form of retrieval of facts or developing skills of inference and deduction.

Shared Reading takes place daily. Shared reading lessons have a high quality, vocabulary rich text at the heart of the session. These texts are taken from lists recommended by CLPE and the Local Authority training. The texts are planned around topics and underlying themes to ensure that depth of learning is achieved. Shared Reading sessions encourage discussion around vocabulary, asking and answering of questions, inferencing, predictions and looking at similarities and connections between texts that have been read. These sessions are conducted in a whole class format. Progressive objectives are taken from the National Curriculum. A different group of children are taken daily during this time for a guided read around an independent task focused on an area of the reading national curriculum. These tasks are based around the shared reading high quality age appropriate text and are recorded in their Guided Reading books.

Daily Read Aloud Story Time is developed through the ‘Reading Spine’ books and cross curricular teaching as teachers support children’s understanding of more complex texts through discussion.

Children have opportunities when they come into school and throughout the day to explore books of their own interest in quiet and inviting book corners.

Policy reviewed every 3 years

Review Date: Autumn 2023