Reading and Phonics

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At Smithdown Primary, we aim to have all children reading widely, fluently and confidently. Having previously been a ‘Power of Reading School’, we have adapted our reading and writing approaches to incorporate Talk for Writing principles, creating an inspiring reading and writing curriculum.

We use the read to write teaching resources by Literacy Counts as the basis of our English planning from Reception to Year 6.  It incorporates reading, writing, vocabulary and GPS skills through the teaching of high quality texts each half term.

It is our aim to encourage children to learn to love reading and to read regularly outside of school. We have recently opened our own lending library for families and pupils to enjoy.

Children will be taught two key reading skills:

Word reading – the ability to decode words- will be taught through the use of the synthetic phonics scheme ‘ReadWriteInc.’ Children will be bench marked to assess which level of books they should be reading and to ensure that they progress appropriately.

We are very fortunate to have two language support assistants to work with children for whom English is not their first language. These members of staff work with individual pupils and give advice to other staff to ensure these children receive high quality interventions.

Comprehension – Children’s comprehension skills will be taught through high quality discussions with teachers and teaching assistants, individual and group reading times and whole class reading activities. We have moved towards a whole class reading approach and we have found that children have become motivated to read and discuss more challenging texts.

Celebrations such as World Book Day are used to invite authors into school and promote the pleasure and knowledge that can be gained from books.

The documents below give you more information about the texts and genres that your child will be covering.  Please note that this document should be read in conjunction with our curriculum overviews as the order of the units may change throughout the year.  In addition to this, we are looking forward to adding to our Read to Write Units.

Reception Overview for reading and writing              Year 1 Overview for reading and writing 

    Year 2 Overview for reading and writing                 Year 3 Overview for reading and writing

       Year 4 Overview for reading and writing             Year 5 Overview for reading and writing 

Year 6 Overview for reading and writing

Smithdown Primary School Reading Progression map from EYFS to Year 6

Primary National Curriculum for English

Support your child with reading 

What is Read Write Inc?

Read Write Inc (RWI) is a phonics complete literacy programme which helps all children learn to read fluently and at speed so they can focus on developing their skills in comprehension, vocabulary and spelling.  The programme is designed for children aged 4-7. However, at Highfield we begin the programme in Nursery and will continue teaching RWI to children beyond the age of 7 if they still need support in their reading.

RWI was developed by Ruth Miskin and more information on this can be found at https://ruthmiskin.com/en/find-out-more/parents/.

How will RWI be taught?

All children are assessed every 6-8 weeks and placed in groups to target their phonic at the appropriate level. This allows complete participation in lessons.

Please click here for further information about how we teach phonics.

This link gives you an overview of how RWI phonics is organised.

RWI phonics

Please click on this link for the Ruth Miskin website where you can find more information regarding Read Write Inc phonics and Literacy & Language including useful videos and guides for parents.

Ruth Miskin website