Reading

At St Therese, we believe that learning to read is one of the most important things a child will learn at school. Reading is our priority!

Leaders have placed reading at the centre of the school’s work. Children in the early years receive an excellent start to reading. Leaders have carefully selected a phonics programme that builds on existing strengths. Teachers have taken great care to match books to the sound pupils know. All adults in school are extremely well trained in teaching phonics. Excellent support enables all pupils to mature into fluent, perceptive readers. This love of reading continues throughout the school. Pupils are attentive readers who are keen to share their interest in books. 

Phonics

We begin school with foundations for phonics where a love of reading is shown through foundations for Phonics which sets out the provision that should be in place to ensure children are well prepared to begin grapheme–phoneme correspondence and blending at the start of Reception. The provision includes a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences. 

The most important aspects of Foundations for Phonics to develop in the nursery are: 

• Sharing high-quality stories and poems with children • 
• Learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes •
•  Activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending • attention to high-quality language with children (see the ‘Language and Vocabulary’ section of the website). 

Sharing stories and poems – Research shows that children benefit from daily sharing of high-quality stories and poems from a young age: they learn language faster, enter school with a larger vocabulary and become more successful readers. From the start of Nursery , children have lots of opportunities to engage with books that fire their imagination and interest, as well as immerse them in language they would not otherwise be exposed to. They are provided with a range of high-quality books to choose and read (in their own words), as well as to share with an adult.

Our complete systematic synthetic phonics programme Little Wandle prioritises the teaching of phonics daily in Reception, Year 1 and Autumn 1 in Year 2 is a phase 5 review ensuring children are secure with their phonics and ready to move on to our scheme books. Phonics teaching begins in week 2 of Reception. Daily assessment for learning is used to identify any child falling behind. Targeted support is given immediately with Keep up and same day intervention to rapidly catch these children up. Teachers know exactly what the children are struggling with and focus on this. Re-assessing every 3 weeks. Leaders use the Little Wandle assessment website to support their tracking and identification of support – highlights exact graphemes. Half termly assessments with heat maps track pupil progress across Rec, Year 1 and Year 2. Children are quickly identified and targeted intervention is essential to ensure children can read accurately and with fluency as soon as they are able to do so. 

Children in Y2 and above who are not secure on phonics will have the Rapid Catch Up Intervention. This is 3 weekly teaching sessions alongside 3 reading sessions which is based on the phase where the support is needed.  

Little Wandle reading sessions ensure that children have a decodable book matched to their secure phonic knowledge. Three sessions are completed in a week; Decode, Prosody and comprehension. This book is then sent home to share at home. This continues with any child receiving Rapid Catch Up intervention. Once children are fluent readers they exit the Little Wandle Programme and move to our schemed books.

Phonics and Reading

The phonics and reading scheme we follow in EYFS and KS1 is called Little Wandle.

More information for parents and carers can be found here:

Little Wandle for parents and carers

Writing 

At St Therese , we think it is important that children learn to write independently from an early stage; children are encouraged to think of themselves as ‘writers’ as soon as they enter school.

We also believe that children learn to become better writers once they understand the purpose, audience and genre of their writing (CAP). We recognise that children enjoy making links across the curriculum which is why writing sits at the very centre of our cross-curricular approach to learning in our school. In order to achieve this, children are taught grammar, spelling and punctuation skills in a progressive manner. Linked to their topics and/or books that the children are engaged in, teachers ensure that the necessary skills are taught in a systematic, yet engaging manner.

Our pupils are taught the necessary skills to be able to engage in a range of writing activities including narrative, non-fiction, plays and poems.

They achieve this by:

• being exposed to rich texts, linked to their writing;
•  having writing carefully modelled for them by skilled practitioners;
• being provided with opportunities to write for a specific audience and purpose;
• being taught the writing processes of planning, drafting, revising, proof-reading in a systematic way;
• being taught how texts are structured;
• being provided with opportunities to develop their skills in punctuation and grammar;
• being taught phonics and other spelling patterns through a systematic and progressive approach (Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised).

As a result, our pupils demonstrate that they can write for a range of purposes across the curriculum.

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