How We Teach Reading At Redgate

At Redgate we are all readers! Our staff are passionate about providing children will the knowledge, skills, vocabulary and understanding to access books and excel in life. Our children are taught a love of reading and it is at the heart of our curriculum. 

Early Years Foundation Stage

From the moment our children start in the Early Years, we foster a love of reading. Our youngest children have access to high quality picture books in all areas of the classroom and outdoors. Books are carefully selected to motivate and inspire children to develop a love of reading.  Children are read to every day, throughout the day, by our highly trained staff. 

Children are taught discrete phonics lessons using ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ synthetic reading programme. This develops their ability to segment and blend a phonemes to read. As a child’s phonological skills develop, children also begin accessing reading through Big Cat Collins phonetically decodable reading books. 

Children's reading development is supported through teacher-led and child initiated activities within continuous provision linked to The Write Stuff EYFS’ symbols. Development is tracked using The Birth to Five Matters Framework. This enables us to monitor progress, in order for children to meet their fullest potentials.

Key Stage One 

In Key Stage One, daily discrete systematic synthetic phonics lessons continue using ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’. 

From Key Stage One, when children have completed the Little Wandle reading programme and have passed the Year One phonic screening check, children take part in ‘book talk’ and 'demonstration comprehension' sessions. This helps to develop their reading fluency and comprehension skills. They engage in daily ‘demonstration reading’ sessions, where an adult reads to them. They also take part in weekly ‘reading buddy’ sessions with Year Six children, who support and record their reading development. 

Children’s phonic and reading development is tracked using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds assessments. This information is inputted into our online assessment system, Phonics Tracker Online, which helps us to identify which children are on track and which children are falling behind. For those pupils who are at risk of falling behind, we use our assessment information to put in place swift 1:1 or group interventions as well as in-class support, in order for them to keep up. 

Pupils reading is also assessed using PM Benchmarking, Salford Reading and Star Assessments, which tracks their progress against age related expectations.

Children in Year One continue to use some elements of continuous provision within the autumn term; therefore there are planned reading based activities in all areas of the classroom and outside to enhance learning.

Reading is planned and delivered across across the curriculum. It is expected that reading skills are embedded through all foundation subjects.

Key Stage Two

Daily ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds’  phonics and reading lessons continue in Key Stage Two for those pupils who need it. This is tracked using Phonics Tracker Online. 

Book Talk and demonstration comprehension lessons continue daily throughout the juniors, where the children are taught to increasingly take charge of their own, and their groups' learning. Each class in the juniors listens to a teacher read/joins in with reading a carefully selected, whole class text, daily (demonstration reading). This develops the children’s love of reading. 

Children continue to use the PM scheme for reading, which moves into an increasing variety of other schemes and eventually independent reading.  

Children’s reading abilities continue to be tracked using Salford Assessments, PM Benchmarking and Star Reading Assessments. 

To see our reading in action, go to #rcpenglish on our twitter page https://twitter.com/Redgate_Primary

Information for Parents - Little Wandle Letters and Sounds

Here are some videos introducing the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds systematic synthetic phonics programme and information about how we teach your child to read at Redgate.

Phoneme Pronunciation - Support for Parents

The three videos below show you how to pronounce the sounds (phonemes) that we learn at school. 

Further Support can be found via this link:  https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

These grapheme information sheets explain how to pronounce the phonemes (sounds). They also explain how to write each grapheme with correct letter formation. 

Examples of Reading at Redgate

Our children and our amazing school have even inspired our families to become authors too!

Lexi's journey as she found her voice in The Pines has inspired her sister to write a book about her exciting adventure and new found friendships throughout our school.

RECOMENDED READS

Books for Topics is an excellent website which contains booklists of recommended children’s books for primary curriculum subjects like history and science, recommendations of the best new children’s books, specific booklists for reading for pleasure like graphic novels and early chapter books and recommendations of the best books by age or year group, which is included below. Please visit https://www.booksfortopics.com/ for more information.