Policy: Phonics and Early Reading Policy 2022
Subject Ambassadors: Mr. C. Storey (Reading); Mrs. A. Green (Handwriting, Spelling, Grammar)
Link Academy Councillor: Mrs. K. Norman
Statements of Intent:
Our Vision:
A place where our children, adults and community can grow and thrive rooted in Kindness, Fellowship and Confidence.
Reading – At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary, we want children to foster a love of reading from an early age by exposing them to a rich breadth of texts across all curriculum areas. Reading opens up a new world for children and allows them to explore different places, characters and cultures. We embed a culture of reading for pleasure, through the rigorous teaching of phonics (Little Wandle) in the early part of their journey, developing confidence and fluency, to give them the skills to not only decode words but to understand the deeper meaning of texts. Focused interventions are implemented to ensure all children can read with fluency, confidence and enjoyment. Reading volunteers are used to support our 1:1 reading across the school and are supported by our Subject Ambassador to deliver our high standards in reading. The use of the Domain Reading Dogs are used thought out Key Stage 1 and 2, to support the children’s understanding of the comprehension aspects linked to reading. The children are also supported in whole class guided reading sessions, where they can spend time unpicking texts and put their comprehension skills into practice.
At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary, all children are exposed to a multifaceted approach to learning. Carefully chosen, engaging texts are used to stimulate children to be creative in lessons, across all subject areas, making their ideas and thoughts come to life. The use of language and ambitious vocabulary is key to providing the children with confidence to use their skills during their school careers and beyond. Our children are offered a diverse range of quality texts that reflect the wider world, for example. We also utilise our local authors to inspire and work with our children to develop their creativity and imaginations. Set story times across all key stages enable the children to spend time to both enjoy and learn from books.
Writing – At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary, children are taught in line with the National Curriculum, focusing on the key skills and knowledge needed to develop their writing ability. A range of genres and approaches are used to expose the children to the world of writing, to become confident and expressive writers themselves. Texts are carefully selected to both challenge and develop the children’s understanding of the world. This journey begins instantly in Opal, with our Nursery children and is built on throughout the Learning Zones to ensure the children have access to quality, well-chosen texts, appropriate to their age and ability during their time at Stanhope C of E Primary. Children are supported to use checklists in their writing and in KS2 can independently take ownership of the quality of their work, knowing what is needed to move onto the next stage of their learning.
Children explore and understand new and ambitious vocabulary, across all subject areas, and are encourage to use it independently within their writing. Both boys and girls are engaged and motivated through a wide range of thought provoking and an open-ended plethora of materials, carefully chosen to set their imaginations alive.
Gross and fine motor skills are developed and mastered in the lower end of school. A rigorous handwriting scheme allows the children to develop a clear understanding of cursive letters that develop into a clear and well-formed join. Children are encouraged from an early age to take pride in their work and this is carried on throughout their school career.
Opal Learning Zone
Foundations for Phonics – The Opal children have been working hard with their Foundations for Phonics sessions. The children have been identifying initial sounds and some of the children have been orally blending words. The children have also been using a range of resources to write their graphemes independently.
Amethyst Learning Zone
Forming graphemes – As the new school year begins, the Amethyst Reception children have been busy starting Phonics. The children had excellent phoneme recognition from their time in Opal and are now mastering their formation of the graphemes. The children are expected to write the grapheme in their books and are then challenged to replicate the learning in the linked provision as shown in the pictures below.
The Three Little Pigs – Each half-term the Amethyst children study a traditional tale. This half-term the children have been learning the story of The Three Little Pigs. Today the children worked co-operatively to retell the story whilst some volunteers played the role of the characters.
Alan’s Big Scary Teeth – This half-term the children have been unpicking the story ‘Alan’s Big Scary Teeth’. The children have been challenged to retell the story and will be writing this independently in the coming weeks. During this session the children were asked to sequence the story, and then use sentence openers to retell it to a peer.
Sapphire Learning Zone
This term the children have enjoyed two fiction texts based around The Great Fire of London. The children have loved expanding their knowledge of their history topic by getting to write and perform as characters who experienced the fire first hand. They have played the part of ‘Toby’ from Toby and The Great Fire of London and ‘Vlad’ (a flea) from ‘Vlad and the Great Fire of London’.
Exploring the work of Julia Donaldson – In the Autumn term, the Year 2 children have been thinking about ordering and re-telling stories. We have used stories by Julia Donaldson, such as ‘Stick Man’ and ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ to practice re-telling stories in a range of ways, including acting and diary writing.
Ruby Learning Zone
Emerald Learning Zone
Guided Reading – Harley Hitch and the Iron Forest – We have a very exciting text by Vashti Hardy called Harley Hitch and the Iron Forest. We will be reading a new chapter each week and exploring how the story unfolds. This week we were answering retrieval questions based on Chapter 1.
Diamond Learning Zone
Archived Information
You can view our archived literacy information on our website.
