Reading

Early Reading and Phonics

We start teaching our children the skills they need to become fluent and accurate readers in reception and follow the Little Wandle learning programme. Little Wandle follows a synthetic approach that teaches children the two key reading skills – decoding texts and understanding meanings. It focuses on five essential skills: learning the letter sounds, letter formation, blending, identifying the sounds in words and reading tricky words.

By the end of their first year in school, children will master reading and writing all 42 letter sounds, form letters correctly using the tripod grip, blend regular words, write simple words, read and spell the first ten tricky words and start reading the first level of Little Wandle books.

Our year one children follow a bespoke frame of work that allows them to consolidate their phonic knowledge from reception and learn phase four and phase five phonics. Phase four teaches children to read and spell words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words. In phase five, the children will broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonics for use in reading and

spelling. They will also learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for these and graphemes they already know. When spelling words, they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent the phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spelling of words.

The sequence of teaching in a discrete phonics lesson in year one is as follows; introduction, revisit, teach, practise, apply and assess.

Guided Reading

Guided reading lessons are taught daily across the key stages, allowing pupils to develop their word reading and comprehension skills. The reading overview has been carefully mapped to ensure progression between year groups and that children are exposed to a wide range of genres.

Each guided reading lesson is 30 minutes, and the structure is as follows; retrieval starter, pre-teach vocabulary, introduce the VIPER, example question with the class teacher, attempt a question independently, apply and challenge.

Class 1 focuses on one book per week, recording their work in a class floor book. When the children move to Class 2 and beyond, they will have a focus book every half term, and the children become more independent, recording their ideas in their separate guided reading book.

Before the children start reading a new book, they devote a week to focusing on the

author, analysing their biography, and comparing the different books they have written. To encourage a love of reading throughout the academy, the pupils participate in delegated times to independently read for pleasure and listen to their class teachers read to them.

Writing

In addition to following the national curriculum, our key aims lay the foundations for our well-sequenced, progressive writing curriculum. At Crudgington, we provide purposeful learning opportunities to facilitate progress in writing across our academy. The purpose of writing is fostered from the earliest stages in each pupil’s time at Crudgington.

The national curriculum for writing aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Effective transcription through knowing spelling and learning handwriting.
• Effective composition by forming, articulating and communicating ideas and then organising them coherently for a reader.
• Enhance their vocabulary.
• Control speaking and writing consciously to standard English.
• Have a structure for writing through punctuation and grammatical features in English.

We have a designated writing lead who oversees the quality of teaching writing, tracks progress and ensures that targeted interventions are delivered to rapidly close any gaps.

Through teaching pupils to effectively link their reading with spelling at an early age, we then build stamina in writing through the Drawing Club sessions in EYFS and KS1. We recognise the importance of pupils mastering this early writing stage, and we ensure that children are regularly exposed to opportunities to write throughout the school day.

Writing lessons occur daily in key stage 1 and key stage 2 classes. The class teacher will model a piece of writing, articulating their thought process and asking for suggestions off the pupils in ways to innovate the writing. This modelled writing supports pupils’ understanding of grammar and punctuation as well as how to structure their writing. The lessons follow a carefully sequenced curriculum that has been designed to ensure that writing skills are revisited, embedded, and built upon. During these sessions, pupils are exposed to a wide range of age-appropriate genres, themes, and authors. Through equipping our pupils with the background knowledge necessary to access and make sense of the vocabulary they are reading and writing, we provide them with opportunities to then develop the fundamental skills and subtle nuances of writing.  Teachers assess and level each independent piece of writing to identify strengths and to narrow gaps in learning.