The Teaching of Early Reading

At Oxhey reading is immersed into our curriculum. It is taught specifically during Phonics and English lessons but children are practising and applying their reading skills constantly across all subject too.

There are many different methods of teaching and practising reading such as:

• Shared reading (ERICA)
• Guided reading
• Phonic lessons
• Storytelling
• Individual reading
• Story time
• Read at Home/Take home books

Below gives you more information to what reading looks like in each year group (Nursery to Year 1)

Nursery

Many activities take place which promote pre-reading skills. Children become aware of print in their environment and match pictures and words. Language comprehension is developed by talking and reading to the children.

Initially, as children learn to read, they are given a picture book with no words with the intention that they will share the book and take part in a conversation generated by the pictures. Gradually as the children's knowledge of letters and sounds develop they begin to phonetically decode words. They are also given a library book - this is a book for the adult to read and share with the child, to feed them with rich and wonderful vocabulary that hopefully one day they will use themselves!

Reception

Children in reception have opportunities to apply their developing phonic knowledge and skills in the context of shared reading and writing across all subjects.  For one to one reading, both in class and at home, children have fully decodable books that are closely matched to their developing phonic level.

In reception these are the reading opportunities each child receives:

• Book of the week - each weeks learning is based around a book, which is based around the half term topic.
• Story time - this happens daily - it is either ERICA, storytelling or general story time with a book that is chosen for pleasure.
• Individual reading - using an appropriately pitched decodable book – each child listened to every week by the teacher and it is recorded in a reading diary; those children who do not read at home have additional reading; books are changed regularly.
• In addition to the decodable book, a reading book for pleasure is taken home from the classroom collection or the school library
• Daily phonic lessons are taught using Sounds-Write.
• Specific reading lessons which are differentiated are taught through English.
• Weekly reading opportunities and challenges are set within the Early Years environment

Year 1

For children in year 1, children continue to read books closely matched to their phonics knowledge and opportunities continue where the children can develop and apply their reading skills.

In year 1, these are the reading opportunities each child receives:

• Topic linked English book - each genre year 1 covers in English will be based around a high quality text that is linked to current topic.
• Daily phonic lessons are taught using Sounds-Write.
• Story time - this happens daily - it is either ERICA, storytelling or general story time with a book that is chosen for pleasure.
• Individual reading - using an appropriately pitched decodable book – each child listened to every two weeks by the teacher and it is recorded in a reading diary; those children who do not read at home have additional reading; books are changed regularly.
• In addition to the decodable book, a reading book for pleasure is taken home from the classroom collection or the school library.
• Guided reading is taught daily and children have a targeted guided reading session that meets their individual needs.
• Reading area in the classroom is freely accessible and offers a wide variety of texts for all children.

Reading Schemes

We ensure that our reading schemes encourage children to apply the new phonological knowledge they have gained by providing them with de-codable home reader reading books from schemes such as Dandelion Readers, Oxford University Press and  Project X . Alongside these schemes we use Rigby Star and Oxford Reading Tree and a wide range of appropriately levelled real books to ensure children develop a great love of reading and have an opportunity to  embed the application of key reading skills.

As mentioned above, when your child is able to de-code and start to read themselves they will receive a book closely matched to their phonic ability. It is recommended that in particular for book banded books pink - Turquoise they are read 3 times.

1st time - to decode and practise phonics

2nd time - to build fluency (read it at a quicker pace)

3rd time - for comprehension (the understanding of the story, they should be more fluent, therefore understand a little more about what is going on in the story)

The document below is a chart showing the progression of book bands and links to phonic phases

Please click here to see the book band progression

 

Developing a Love of Reading