Reading

Reading is a whole school priority.

At Stubbins, we teach all children to read. Our ambition is that we will teach ALL children to read before they leave school.

Phonics

Teaching children to read is an essential part of their learning. Reading is a skill that helps to develop vocabulary and improve understanding of words.

At Stubbins, we teach phonics using the Twinkl Phonics Programme. It is a fast paced, clearly progressed phonic programme that takes children through six levels. Children progress through the levels at different speeds. In order to make this learning relevant to all children, we have grouped them according to the phase they are at.

Phonics is taught daily in 45 minute sessions. A variety of short activities make up these sessions. Phonics is as interactive and engaging as possible to enable all children to access the work. We use Twinkl Phonics to plan and deliver our phonics sessions. Our reading books are also linked to this so that children can read books that they are able to phonically decode. 

Comprehension

The teaching of reading is prioritised to allow pupils to access the full curriculum offer. A rigorous and sequential approach to the reading curriculum develops pupils’ fluency, confidence and enjoyment in reading.  Reading is taught initially via high-quality and pacy daily phonics sessions following the 'Twinkl' scheme. There is a sharp focus on ensuring that younger children gain phonics knowledge and language comprehension necessary to read, and the skills to communicate, gives them the foundations for future learning. The children have a rich reading curriculum and the skills of reading are taught through effective shared and guided reading sessions, in Key Stage 2, which are sequential and build upon prior learning.

In Early Years and KS1 children read books, or discuss picture books, which are matched to the phonics phase that they are currently working on using the Rhino Readers Scheme. Once children have passed their phonics, they can fluently read anything as they understand the code to read! The children can read any books for pleasure however we do make sure books are age appropriate and help them to develop their comprehension skills further in KS2.

Guided reading takes place in Key Stage Two, using John Murray texts matched to the needs of the children. This is completed as a whole class where teachers actively teach how to comprehend a variety of text types and genres.

A love for learning is promoted throughout school with daily reading time, class reading areas, visits to the school library and promoting reading where possible through special events such as World Book Day.

Across all year groups, there is an expectation that children read to an adult at home regularly. Books will be changed once a week as we want to develop fluent readers.

Books for Topics has created a list of 50 texts which children should be encouraged to read/be heard read each year. You can find these files at the bottom of this page.