Information

At Pilling St John’s, we value reading as an essential skill for life and we are dedicated to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. We believe reading is key to academic success and place a high priority in ensuring children can read fluently and confidently across a range of texts. 

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. 

As a school, our aims in teaching reading are that the pupils will: 

• Develop a love of literature across a range of genres, cultures and styles. 

• Develop the habit of reading widely and with increasing stamina, for both pleasure and information. 

• Read easily, fluently and with good understanding, developing a good working vocabulary. 

• Read a wide range of texts and demonstrate their understanding through discussion and written responses. 

• Apply their reading skills, enabling them to approach and understand an unfamiliar text confidently. 

• Confidently discuss and review the books they read, making recommendations to others.

The Red Rose Letters and Sounds teaching content for each phase is separated out into weeks. Books (Phonics Readers) are then matched to the teaching content, so that teachers can see quickly and easily which readers can be introduced in which week.

Phonics Readers are introduced once all the teaching content for the week has been covered. Two or more Phonics Readers are introduced in some weeks. Any Phonics Readers that children have not read during the week in which they are introduced can be read in subsequent weeks to reinforce their knowledge.

In some weeks, no new Phonics Readers are introduced. These weeks can be used to allow children to catch up with any Phonics Readers that they have not yet read from previous weeks. Children may also choose to re-read Phonics Readers from previous weeks to consolidate their knowledge.

Some teaching weeks in the Red Rose Letters and Sounds progression are also used to consolidate existing knowledge. This is particularly common in Phase Two. Within the My Letters and Sounds Phonics Readers, some Phonics Readers are designated ‘Practice’ readers because they do not introduce new content. These ‘Practice’ readers have been assigned to the consolidation weeks so that children can develop their existing learning.

Pupils at PSJ have access to a range of Digital Resources, that are designed to support and further enhance learning. 

We have created a Digital Reading Record (see images below) that supplement the hard copy Reading Record. This is designed to enable pupils to showcase their knowledge, share book reviews with their peers, add in Voice Notes (for those pupils who can sometimes be reluctant to write) and for pupils to track their reading in Literary Genres and much more!

Here at Pilling St John's, we use a consistent, systematic and vigorous approach to phonics.

Click on the TouTube video to the left to watch our Vlog

We do this using the Red Rose Letters and Sounds phonics scheme to the teaching of synthetic phonics across Early Years and Key Stage 1 (and for those children who require continuity of Phonics provision in Key Stage 2).

What is the intent behind Red Rose Letters and Sounds?

The intent behind Red Rose Letters and Sounds is to provide a rigorous and thorough planning programme in order to strengthen the teaching and learning of phonics, and ensure children become enthusiastic and successful readers and writers.

What is included to implement Red Rose Letters and Sounds?

The programme includes:

• Overviews for each phase with termly expectations.

• Word banks that directly match the teaching of focus graphemes.

• Additional word banks to broaden and deepen vocabulary in order to provide stretch and challenge.

• Comprehensive daily planning following revisit / review, teach, practise, apply.

• Carefully sequenced tricky words and high frequency words with high expectations for application into reading and spelling.

• Application opportunities planned throughout to ensure blending and segmenting of words and sentences.

• Regular consolidation and assessment points to support the identification of children on track and those falling behind.

Phonics resources
A phonics glossary for parents is included here, as it is a really useful guide to assist with the definitions of the terms we will use in phonics. 

In school we use these words with the children each day within their phonics learning: