At Evenwood C of E Primary School we believe that being able to read and write are the vital skills that enable us to understand and express ourselves more effectively.

These skills open the door to learning. We passionately believe in helping children to develop not only the technical skills of reading and writing, but also in engendering a love for literature and the different genres of writing.

Phonics

At Evenwood C of E Primary School, we are using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised which is a synthetic phonics programme (SSP) used to deliver high quality phonics. Little Wandle provides children with the skills and practice to decode (read) and encode (spell) through their structured approach. All of our teaching and support staff have been trained in the phonics programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.

Little Wandle Programme Overview (Reception and Year 1).

For further information on Little Wandle, including how to support your child at home,  please click here.

Reading 

Our classrooms are full of visual stimulus to help children begin to read and write. In KS1 children listen to daily stories during story time. The teachers choose from a bank of suggested literature to share with the children to help promote a love of reading from an early age and to help with early vocabulary development.

In KS1, children read their books three times a week before they take their book home with a focus of developing their fluency. The book your child will bring home will only contain the phonetic code they have been exposed to. This means that the children are able to read most of the words by applying their phonics. This success in reading builds confidence and helps instil a love of reading, whilst consolidating skills and sounds learnt in their phonics lessons and reading fluency.

In KS2, reading remains at the heart of the curriculum. Sharing high quality texts with the children continues, sometimes in the form of shared reading sessions and other times as part of story time. Shared reading sessions are led by the teacher using high quality texts which have been carefully selected using the theory from the book ‘Reading Reconsidered’ by Doug Lemov. Other texts used in these sessions are chosen from recent award winning literature. The purpose of these sessions is to continue to develop the children’s love of reading as well as enhancing the children’s vocabulary and developing comprehension skills. Within the weekly timetable, there is also time allocated to comprehension sessions where the children use age related extracts to develop comprehension skills. These specific skills and text types are carefully planned so that the children experience text in different forms.

The books available to the children in each of the classrooms at St. Michaels in KS2 have been selected by the class teachers. Each year group has multiple copies of ten story books which have been carefully chosen. As part of the work completed with Teresa Cremin at  the Open University and The English Hub, we believe that having texts that are familiar to the class teacher and other children, can significantly promote book talk and meaningful dialogue about authors, plot and characters inside and outside of the classroom setting.

In the wider curriculum, subject leaders have worked to develop a selection of fiction and non-fiction texts. These texts are used within the teaching of certain National curriculum topics. Throughout all subjects, the children have opportunity to read and use different books and extracts which further develop their word reading and comprehension skill set whilst developing their subject knowledge in subjects such as history, geography art and D.T.

Book Chat
Reading with your child can support them in developing a love of reading. The OU have come up with guides and videos to support parents with this.

Book Chat: Reading with your Child | Research-Rich Pedagogies
Book Chat Guide
Book Chat Poster

Reading Aloud
Books for Topics 3-5
Books for Topics 5-7
Books for Topics 7-9
Books for Topics 9-11

Recommended Texts
Booktrust great books guide

Story time
Story time 3-5
Story time 5-7
Story time 7-9
Story time 9-11

Top Ten Storytimes – 3-7 years
Top Ten Storytimes – 7-11 years

Supporting Readers at Home Poster
Reading Aloud to Children – 7 steps to make it magical
Why re-reading story books matters

Picture Books
YR and Y1 picture books about fear and worry
YR and Y1 picture books promoting diversity