Reading at St Matthias

Reading is integral to all learning at St. Matthias. We utilise any opportunities we can to foster Love of Reading in every one of our pupils. Reading has a high profile within the school, with daily reading sessions in KS2 taught every day, as well as daily Phonics in EYFS and KS1.  As well as this, our Accelerated Reader programme is a powerful tool for monitoring and managing independent reading practice while promoting reading for pleasure.

Children have been taught the skills needed to initially recognise sounds and hear sounds in words; blend sounds to create words, read sentences, paragraphs and then move on to whole texts with accuracy and understanding. Reading occurs in every subject of the curriculum and children transfer these skills across all lessons.

In addition to this, we have established daily  story times for children to listen to the teacher, have opportunities to read with another class and change library books. We have invested in books to appeal to our more reluctant readers, as well as those more representative of the children we teach.

We use all opportunities to also engage families, carers and other relatives as readers, with events in the past such as:

• Our World Book Day Breakfasts (where children, parents and carers were invited to share stories over breakfast dressed as their favourite book characters).
• Reading Taster Breakfasts; these allow children, parents and carers to see the new books that would be available in the library next term.
• Whole school projects inspired by significant texts
• Our whole-school Black History Month activities and projects in lessons, as well as the yearly Black History Month Event, bring together cross-curricular class work and a variety of entertainment and celebration.
• We also have a parents reading table for the exchange and sharing of books.

Early Reading at St Matthias

At St Matthias, we strive to ensure that children have the best opportunities in an inclusive and purposeful learning environment. We place a great value on the teaching of early reading and have been highly successful at teaching children to read through our daily phonics programme, RWInc.

Phonemes – the sounds a letter/group of letters make

Graphemes – the letter/letters used to make a sound

In the Early years, children begin by building an awareness of different sound. This can include the children understanding sounds in their environment and how their body makes sounds. Songs and rhymes are also an important way for children to build an awareness of sounds in Nursery. Children are only expected to know a couple of sounds by the end of Nursery, but will quickly be introduced to new sounds in Reception.

When they are confident identifying a group of letters, children will then start to learn to blend sounds together to form words.  Some children will then be able to decode sentences and begin to read simple books. They will also be looking at high frequency words, which will help them in their reading journey.

By Year 1, children will develop their confidence in reading and will be introduced to increasingly complex sounds, preparing them for more interesting and varied story books. As well as blending sounds to make words, children will be learning to break down (segment) words to be able to spell them and use their sounds in their writing.

Each June, all children in Year 1 do their phonics screening test.  This is a short assessment to find out how accurately the children are reading decodable words. Children will be asked to ‘sounds out’ a word and then blend the sounds together. For example:

d–o–g      dog             f-air        fair            l-igh-t        light

The children will be asked to read real words and made up ‘alien’ words.

Download Phonics Screen Check Sound Book

In Year 2, children will be using all of their previously taught sounds and using alternative spellings when learning spelling rules. It is expected that children will have completed our phonics programme by the end of Year 2.

How you can help your child at home

Encourage your child to ‘sound out’ when reading and writing. Practice the sounds using either the sound cards (which are available at Reception) or the sound mat overleaf. Encourage children to find the more tricky sounds when reading.

Diagraph:  2 letters making one sound                  cow                      start                      saw

Trigraph:3 letters making one sound                     night                      fair                     pure

Split Diagraphs: 2 vowels making one sound with a letter in between   make   cube    bone

We Are Storytellers!

During lockdown, some of our children recorded themselves reading stories.