Phonics & Reading « Bridgewater School

Short videos about how we teach children to read and write with Read Write Inc. Phonics, along with other related videos, can be found here on the Ruth Miskin website.

Please click on the below links for videos of speed sounds and oral blending in action.

Phonics Oral Blending – Fred Out Loud

If you would like to find out more about the schemes we are using, please contact the school office either in person or on 0191 274 5290.

The importance of reading and phonics at Bridgewater Primary School

Reading plays a vital role in the development and education of your child. It is at the heart of the curriculum at Bridgewater. Teaching a child to read is one of the greatest gifts as it can open up their world around them. Because of this, we see it as a primary purpose of our curriculum. We ensure that our children not only learn the skills and knowledge to enable them to read but also develop life-long positive attitudes towards reading and its importance. It is our mission to ensure that all children leave us at the end of Year 6 as fluent and avid readers, armed with the tools necessary in order thrive in secondary school and beyond.

At Bridgewater we ensure that pupils have lots of opportunities to read in lots of different contexts. Children are encouraged to take their reading folders home every night to read at home and bring back the next day to read in school too. We aim for parents to be partners in their child’s reading and we recognise the important role that reading at home plays in a child’s reading journey.

Phonics

All children who are receiving RWInc phonics lessons will take home a ‘Book bag’ book which matches their phonic ability. This is a phonetically decodable book which is matched to their phonic knowledge. ‘Book bag’ books are part of the Read Write Inc phonics programme. Strategic half termly assessments ensure that Book Bag Books are matched appropriately to each child. Children are expected to read these three times either at home or at school and we encourage parents/carers to sign the yellow home/school reading record when reading has taken place. They will also take home a paper copy of the Read Write Inc book they have been reading in their school session which will help to increase their fluency. We also send home flash cards with RWInc sounds and words on for some children for extra practice. All children will also take home a library book/pack of library books to promote ‘reading for pleasure’ and we encourage parents to share these stories with their children.

Once children can read fluently and have completed the RWInc phonics programme, they will read through a set of book banded books. Each colour in the book band is a different level. We provide a diet and range of books at different levels within a book band and children will take home a range of fiction/non-fiction/poetry. The children know which book band they are working at and recognise the book band that they are working towards. When the children have worked through the book banded books, they become a ‘guided reader’ where they will be guided to a range of age-appropriate books by their teachers.

We also teach high frequency and sight vocabulary which are words you cannot sound out and you have to read from looking at the shape of it and what it looks like. The Read Write Inc programme call these words ‘Red words’. Children from Reception will bring words home in packs to learn to read ‘on sight’ which they have to memorise. These words will link to the book band they are reading.

Opportunities for reading

Pupils also read regularly in other areas of the curriculum and in other parts of the school day through:

Guided Reading – Teachers in Key Stage 1 and 2, work with small groups of pupils to teach specific and targeted reading skills in a book that is sufficiently challenging.
Whole Class Reading Lessons – Children in Key Stage Two enjoy whole class reading lessons often during ERIC time, during which they are immersed in the class text. These sessions provide further opportunity to read aloud, modelling reading with expression and intonation, as well as exploring plot, themes, vocabulary and inferred meaning in depth as a whole class. We aim for children to develop key reading comprehension competencies, focusing on retrieve, infer, vocabulary, predict, explain and summarise.
Reading Across the Curriculum – Pupils read a range of books linked to other areas of their learning and within Key Stage 2, children read to learn across foundation curriculum areas, with children engaging in wider research, both online and through carefully selected fiction and non-fiction texts.
Library sessions – Each class has a timetabled library session each week to share stories. It is also another opportunity for children to change their library book.
Story Time – Across the whole school, books are read aloud and shared with pupils on a regular basis. This helps children to hear expressive reading and to develop an enthusiasm for reading books themselves.