Phonics and Early Reading

Reading

Our aim at Brockwell Nursery and Infant school is to give children the skills necessary to become  confident, independent readers and to develop a love of reading that will stay with them throughout their lives.

Our reading scheme is devised by our teachers, taking books from a range of schemes, using the coloured book bands according to the National Banding System. The books the children take home closely link to the Phonics Band they are working on. It is so important that you read with your child as often as you can - ideally daily. In order to help your child get the most out of reading - when your child is reading their reading scheme book - we have put together 'A guide to reading at our school'. 

As well as taking reading scheme books home daily, all children are encouraged to take home books from our reading areas in classrooms to share with their family. The books in our reading areas are regularly updated and are high quality fiction and non-fiction texts. Whether children are just starting out as readers, or are well on the way to becoming confident, independent readers, having a story read to them that they may or may not be able to access themselves, helps greatly in them developing as readers. It does this by exposing them to rich language and gives an understanding of story that then helps develop their own reading and writing skills. If you would like some suggestions of high quality texts to share with your child, please click here.

We have created a guide to being a 'Good Reader' - this gives you tips and ideas of how to further support your child's reading at home as it is so much more than simply being able to read a text fluently. Please click here to take a look.

Phonics

What is phonics?

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The phonics scheme we use in school is Letters and Sounds, a phonics resource published by the Department for Education and Skills in 2007. We have developed our use of the Letters and Sounds program by including appropriate resources, using decodable books that match pupils’ phonic knowledge and providing staff training. This ensures a consistent approach across school and enables all children in school to achieve well in this area.

The scheme splits the learning into phases. The children work in the phase which is the most appropriate to their stage of learning. When teaching phonics we ensure that children are taught 'pure' sounds.

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Alongside the children learning the sounds that the letters make, they also learn how to blend them together to make words. The video below shows how this is done.

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With degrees of overlap we aim for Reception children to work within Phases 2, 3 and 4, Year 1 children to be working at Phases 4 and 5 and Year 2 children on Phase 6 with consolidation of Phase 5.

Please see the table below for all our Phonics planning