Reading

Reading is one of life’s most essential skills. At Meadow View, we hope that all children will develop a love of books, enthusiasm for improving their reading skills and grow to be confident, competent readers. Reading is happening all the time in our classrooms and across school. It is not only taught in Phonics and English lessons, but children are practising and using their 'reading' constantly across all subjects too.

Phonics at Meadow View

Early reading at Meadow View is taught through a systematic, synthetic phonics programme (SSP) called Read, Write Inc. (RWI). Phonics lessons may be taught in whole class groups or streamed groups, depending, which is most effective for the content being taught. When reading the RWI texts in school it may be necessary to stream children within year groups in order to ensure all children are reading texts of an appropriate difficulty.

Phonics teaching will start in Nursery and will focus around the six aspects of pre phonological awareness stages. Children need to develop their listening skills prior to embarking on the Read Write Inc. programme and will do so by working on activities based around:

1. Speech Detection  
2. Syllable Awareness
3. Onset and Rime
4. Rhyme Detection
5. Initial Sounds
6. Oral Segmenting and Blending

Alongside this, children will also be taught to correspond the phonemes of the RWI set 1 sounds with their graphemes. They will focus on the formation of the graphemes in their names.

Phonics teaching in Reception will focus on embedding grapheme-phoneme correspondence of the RWI set 1 sounds and developing the children’s ability to form letters correctly in the pre-cursive style. As the set 1 sounds are taught, children will learn to blend graphemes to read simple words/sentences and segment phonemes to spell simple words/sentences. Once children are secure with this stage, they will progress onto Set 2 sounds.

Children in Year 1 will be taught the alternative graphemes that represent the phonemes in the English language. This will involve learning the RWI set 3 sounds and the alternate graphemes that are not included in the RWI programme. The children will learn that some phonemes can be represented by multiple graphemes and will learn to correspond each grapheme to its phoneme. They will develop their spelling skills by beginning to choose the correct grapheme to represent phonemes when spelling words.

Children in Year 2 or above, who are unable to demonstrate an embedded knowledge of the Year 1 phonics curriculum will continue to work on obtaining this knowledge during their time at Meadow View. Most children, including those who are able to use their phonics skills to fluently decode words, will need work on applying their phonics knowledge in order to develop their ability to spell words accurately.

Children on the RWI programme will read in school the RWI Ditty books / fiction storybooks / non-fiction books at a level appropriate to their progress. RWI home reading ‘Book Bag’ texts of a matching level will be sent home for the child to read with parents/carers. Supplementary reading books from other phonetically decodable schemes will also be sent home to ensure breadth of reading material.

Reading at Meadow View

Pupils have opportunities to undertake guided, shared and independent reading throughout the school. A diverse range of class reading books and a staged reading scheme are available for pupils to take home to read.

As a school, we utilise Reciprocal Reading strategies. Reciprocal reading involves a dialogue between the teacher and children. It is a group activity where the leader first models a number of effective reading strategies which the children learn to use for themselves independently. It is an interactive teaching technique and is suitable for all readers. Reciprocal reading has four key strategies that the children will become familiar with and can use in not only guided reading session, but also other areas of the curriculum.

Home Reading at Meadow View

Children, who partake in the phonics programme,  will take home an RWI Book Bag reading book matched to the RWI level they are currently working on in school. They will have read a different RWI text with an adult in school and the book they take home will reinforce the learning that has taken place in class. Children will change their RWI Book Bag reading book at least once a week. 

Alongside their reading book, children will bring home a wider reading book. These are colour-banded book. The early stages of these books will be phonetically decodable; however, there may be occasions where children encounter a grapheme that has not yet been taught. Please support your child in sounding out and blending any words they find difficult. They will also encounter words which are not phonetically decodable (e.g. the, they) so, if your child does not recognise these words by sight, please assist them by telling them the word. After seeing and hearing these words lots of times, they will begin to recognise them by sight. The colour banded books can be changed as often as required; however, please ensure you sign your child’s reading record, as without an adult signature to say the child has read, the book will not be changed.

In addition to the reading books, children will also take home a ‘Book Box’ book, which will be changed weekly. These books are for you to take the opportunity to read to and share with your child. A child a week per class from Nursery – Year 3, will also be selected to bring home a reading suitcase.  These are given out on a Friday and we ask for them to be returned by the following Wednesday. 

There may be occasions where some children in Key Stage 2 need to continue on the phonics scheme. These children will be taught regular phonics lessons and will continue to bring home the ‘Book Bag’ books to support and embed their phonics. 

Children in Year 2 and above, who do not need to continue to follow the phonics scheme, will not need to bring home the ‘Book Bag’ books and will continue with books from their suitable colour banding, along with their ‘Book Box’ books.

Alongside school books, children can access our online reading programme called Reading Eggs. If you need your child’s username and password, please contact your child’s teacher.

If you would like further information on the progression of skills in reading; please see the attached document. 

Please see below for details of reading progression through book bands.