New Pasture
LanePhonics and Early Reading.
Our approach to Phonics
At New Pasture Lane our aim is to help children become effective, reflective readers.
Early reading is taught using synthetic phonics, whereby pupils are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend these sounds through the word for reading and how to segment the sounds in order to write words. They are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading but are also taught tricky words and common exception words which do not completely follow the phonic rules.
Our progressive approach to teaching phonics follows the DfE approved Little Wandle programme which all classes follow for the teaching of phonics and early reading. In this scheme, we systematically build on the skills and knowledge of previous learning. We also use the online Reading Eggs resource - an interactive resource that models the skills of segmenting and blending as well as providing interactive phonetic books and games based on every child’s reading age.
All children in Reception and Key stage 1 take part in a daily twenty-minute, high quality phonics sessions. These sessions focus on key reading skills such as decoding to read words and segmenting the sounds in each word to spell. During Phonics lessons we also teach children to read and write tricky words and common exception words. These are words that cannot easily be sounded out, so children are explicitly taught how to read and write them. Our phonics sessions are designed to be fun and interactive, and children’s achievement is carefully and frequently tracked to ensure progress is rapid.
Reading fluency and comprehension
Reading is a multifaceted skill. Our phonics approach enables children to make the best start with decoding and phonological awareness, leading to word recognition. The teaching of reading throughout school is designed to build on this, providing opportunities for children to learn and practise comprehension and fluency skills, using the National Curriculum as our framework. We have recently invested in a wide range of fully decodable books (Collins Big Cat) for children to take home and practise the focus sounds that they are working on in school.
There is a clear progression route through the whole school which highlights clearly what provision is made for 1:1 reading, group reading and the whole class teaching reading skills.
