At Briercliffe Primary School, reading is prioritised to allow pupils to access the full curriculum.

Reading is taught through delivering effective phonics guided reading sessions.

Phonics

At Briercliffe Primary School, phonics is taught daily to all children in Reception and Key Stage One. We follow the systematic synthetic phonics programme' Red Rose Letters and Sounds'. Bounce back phonics is delivered in years 2, 3 and 4 to support children who require additional support with phonics.

Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully. They are taught how to:

• Recognise the sounds that individual letters make
• Identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make-such as 'sh' or 'oo'
• Blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word

Children can then use this knowledge to 'decode' new words that they hear or see. This is the first important step in learning to read.

The children are taught to read words by blending, which means pushing all the sounds together to make a word.  The children are taught to spell words by segmenting, which means sounding out words and writing down the sounds they can hear.

 By the end of Reception children are expected to be secure in Phase Three. By the end of Year One children are expected to be secure in Phase Five. When finishing Key Stage One, most children at Briercliffe should be secure in Phase Six. This phase moves away from learning sounds and focusses on spelling rules and patterns. Our children do well in the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check and by Year 2, the majority are fluent readers with the best chance of success at the end of Key Stage 1 tests.

Children are given accurately matched, fully decodable home reading books that allow them to apply their phonic knowledge and practice reading at home with their parents. The books contain only the phonemes which the children have already been taught so far, and leave nothing for the children to 'guess' when reading (which can often lead to errors).  The exception to this is for children receiving intervention who are not currently working at age-related expectations. They will take home readers home that match the learning covered in intervention sessions. We believe it is important for children to experience success when reading these books, and they must be celebrated for reading these fluently at home. Allow them to show off their reading ability to you and share the joy of reading together!

Please click on the link below for a parent and carers guide to pronouncing phonemes.

 

Guided Reading

All children take part in a daily guided reading session.

In guided reading, we use the workshop approach. The format of guided reading workshops varies depending on reading attainment. The workshop for early readers is different to that of the developing and fluent, all of which are similar. 

The early readers workshop consists of a phonics session, followed by an adult led word reading, followed by an adult led comprehension session. After, this is an independent reading task and finally a session to read for pleasure. 

The developing and fluent readers' workshop consists of a pre-read focusing on vocabulary which will be met in the text, followed by a guided reading session with an adult. After this session there is a follow-up task where the children will complete a task focused on the same learning objective as their guided session. This task, used to inform assessment, will be based around the following pages or chapter depending on what is being read. Next is an independent reading skills task which is created based upon a previously taught reading skill. To finish the workshop, the final session is to allow time for the children to read for pleasure. 

Over the half-term, children will experience reading workshops planned around fiction, non-fiction and poetry. 

Reading for Pleasure

At Briercliffe we encourage all children to develop a love for reading by providing a wide range of opportunities and experiences. These include:

• Annual Book Fair
• Author visits
• Celebrating national reading events, including World Book Day.
• Continually developing our school library, including linking in with Lancashire Library Service.
• Class readers, with adults reading to children.

AUTHOR - Luke Temple

            

The children had a great time listening to Luke read some stories from his books from the Felix Dashwood series.

Have a look at his website to find out more about his books. https://luketemple.co.uk/the-books/ 

Parental Involvement

The importance of regular reading at home is continually highlighted to parents and is part of our homework policy. Children are expected to read at least 3 times a week and parents are asked to sign their child's reading record every time they read with their child.  These children that read 3 times a week are given a raffle ticket and are included in a half-term raffle to win a book or book voucher, and are then included in our weekly newsletter. We acknowledge that parents, and children, lead very busy lives, but reading for 10 minutes, at least 3 times a week, will make a huge difference and allow your child to develop into a confident reader and remember ...

During parents' evening, and on our end of year report, a reading target is shared with parents. The target is individual to those children and supports their next step in reading.

Below you will find some useful websites and documents to help with reading at home. 

Oxford Owl For School and Home https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/

Phonics Play https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

Teach Your Monster http://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/

Learn English Kids http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en

Book Trust https://www.booktrust.org.uk/