Reading & Phonics

“There’s no friend as loyal as a book…” Ernest Hemingway​

Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. At Sir Martin Frobisher Academy, we truly believe that reading provides a ticket to access an enriching curriculum and a bright and successful future.​

Within the Reading National Curriculum there are two main foci; ‘decoding’ words and being able to comprehend and understand what is being read.​

Here at Sir Martin Frobisher Academy we use Read Write Inc. Phonics, a very popular and successful literacy programme to ensure that these two foci are being delivered securely from a very early age. This is delivered in Reception and Y1. This way of teaching phonics equips the children with the tools they need to decode texts.

Our early reading (RWI) policy can be found here.

 

Please follow this link to access the Read, Write Inc home page.

At Sir Martin Frobisher Academy, a child will learn to read in a very simple way. He or she will learn to:

  1. Read letters by their ‘sounds’
  2. Blend these sounds into words
  3. Read the words in a story. The sounds which provide the children with the tools to read are split into three groups:
  1. Set 1 sounds are sounds written with one letter.
  2. Set 2 sounds (ay, ee, igh, ow, oo, oo, ar, or, air, ir, ou, oy)
  3. Set 3 sounds ((ea, oi, a-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, aw, are, ur, er, ow, ai, oa, ew, ire, ear, ure)

Your child will be taught to say the sound for the letter and not the letter name to begin with.  Some children will also benefit from our focussed and targeted interventions to further support the development of their early reading.

Once children know the sounds from Set 1, 2 and 3, they are introduced to the books available in the library.  Children will take a book home to read every week and will be listened to read by an adult in school every week. .

In lessons, we follow the “Destination Reader” scheme which shares high quality texts with children over a series of weeks. The premise surrounding Destination Reader ensures that all children take part in a guided lesson led by a skilled practitioner. Children are provided with an opportunity to apply their learning independently during a related task. Quite often, the Reading sessions are linked to the wider context of learning and involve a reading task which further aids reading fluency.

We also endeavour to promote a love of reading across our school and curriculum. We do this by providing plenty of opportunities for children to engage with and reflect on a range of texts. This is done:

  • within the classroom
  • through visits to our school library
  • by reading weekly with an adult in their class
  • celebrating World Book Day
  • reading a class novel at the end of each day

The children are then able to use their learnt sounds to spell words and apply this to their writing. Often words and sentences are built phonetically by using the sounds they are familiar with in order to convey their meaning.