At Wolsingham Primary School we have a culture where reading is highly valued and enjoyed by everyone. We reinforce the importance of reading through high quality texts used in lessons and through inspirational reading areas such as our library and reading corners in classrooms. We have invested in home reading books for those children who are currently on the Read Write Inc Phonics program. This has helped us to ensure that all children can access home reading books that are matched to the sounds they have already learned in their Phonics lessons. Our library is well resourced with an inspiring range of books for use by our Year 2 and Key Stage 2 pupils who are able to make their own choices about the genre and authors that they particularly enjoy as well as expanding their reading horizons.
We encourage all of our children, from Nursery to Year 6, to read regularly at home. Reading for just 15 minutes per day can have a huge positive impact on children’s well-being, achievement and imagination!
The Book Trust have some great tips and advice for reading with children at home. To find out more visit: The Book Trust Website
Everyone wants their child to do well in reading. Apart from that nightly bedtime story, you may be wondering about what else you could be doing to make sure that your child gets off to a good start. Similarly, once your child can read independently, how do you make sure that they enjoy and keep reading? This section of the site will talk about all the things you can do to encourage them and has been adapted from Oxford University Press Oxford Owl website.
Enjoying reading together in all kinds of different situations is vital all through the primary years. But it’s also important to balance this with some focus on your child’s developing reading skills. It’s a good idea as your child gets older to revisit the tips for younger children and to continue to use those that are still useful for your child. Don’t worry about doing that at all!
Take a look below for general top tips for 3-7 year olds or 7-11 year olds or select from the panel for age specific ideas for 3-11 year olds.
Read Write Inc
At Wolsingham Primary School, our children start to learn to read using the Read, Write Inc. synthetic phonics programme, before moving on to the Accelerated Reader programme when they become more confident readers.
In 2012, Wolsingham Primary School introduced the Read Write Inc. synthetic phonics programme. Its aim is to help the children learn many of the phonics (sounds) used in the English language to assist both reading and writing. It has been tried and tested over many years and takes a systematic and structured approach to teaching phonics.
Examples of how each letter and groups of letters (“special friends”) are said can be found on the Jolly Phonics site. The children are encouraged to use ‘pure sounds’, which means that they should not add the ‘er’ sound after a letter, e.g. the letter ‘t’ is not pronouced ‘ter’ but is the first sound in “top”.
How does it work?
The children to decode by learning 44 sounds and matching letters/ letter groups; by learning to blend sounds to read words and by reading specially written books that include only the sounds that the children have been learning and therefore ensuring success as the children are never given anything that they can’t read. The English language has 44 phonemes (letter sounds), but more than 150 graphemes (the way the sound is written down) and therefore a very complex code. Through Read Write Inc., children are taught a simple code first before moving on to the complex code. To see the simple speed sounds and the complex speed sound charts used in Read Write Inc., please click on the documents below.
To learn how to pronounce the ‘pure sounds’ please click here.
Red Words
These are common words that do not follow the normal rules and are therefore not decodable. Children are taught to look at these words carefully and identify the part of the word that doesn’t follow the rule. Please click on the link below to find a list of these words.
Children also talk a lot about what they have read to show that they understand. They also listen to and discuss other ideas to deepen their understanding and therefore their comprehension. By using ‘Fred sounds’ children learn to blend sounds into words for reading and segment words into sounds for spelling.
Once children have completed the Read Write Inc. programme and can read fluently, they move on to read books on the Accelerated Reader Program.
Accelerated Reader
Accelerated Reader Information Booklet for Parents
AR is a computer program that helps teachers manage and monitor children’s independent reading practice. Children are able to pick a book at their own level and read it at their own pace. When finished, children take a short quiz on the computer – passing the quiz is an indication that a child has understood what has been read. AR gives both children and teachers feedback based on the quiz results which the teacher then uses to help the child set targets and ongoing reading practice.
Children using AR have a free choice of the books they read, rather than having one assigned to them. This makes reading a much more enjoyable experience as they feel in control and can choose books that are interesting to them. Teachers will help children choose books that are at an appropriate reading level. These will be challenging without being frustrating and will also be at a level at which children can pass the quiz and experience success.
