Phonics and Reading

Here is a typical phonics lesson at our school.

Reception Parents - Phonics Information Morning

We were delighted to welcome reception parents and our chair of governors into school for our phonics information morning. 

Our English and phonics leaders delivered a presentation to parents outlining our approach to teaching phonics using the 'Essential Letters and Sounds' programme and how they could support their children with reading at home.

Parents then enjoyed time with their children playing phonics games and reading a range of books.

Thank you to all parents who visited and for your really positive feedback.

"That was really beneficial and very detailed. It's good to know exactly what is been taught to my child and how." (Reception parent).

A phonics workshop was held in school for parents to attend.

Phonics - Screening Check

Phonics - A Parent Guide - Learn to Read with Phonics

If you have a child in their first year of primary school, there is a good chance you will have come across the word 'Phonics'.

Phonics is a method of learning to read words that is taught from the start of Reception. 

Read on to find out how your child uses phonics at school, how to correctly say the 44 phonics sounds, and how you can help at home. 
 
What is synthetic phonics? 

Synthetic phonics is a way of teaching reading. Your child will be taught two crucial things when they are learning to read using synthetic phonics: 

1. How sounds are represented by written letters. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘m’ represents an mmm sound. 
2. How sounds can be blended together to make words. For example, they will be taught that the sounds of the letters ‘c-a-t’ blend together to make the word ‘cat’. 

Your child will be taught to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sound (or sounds) they represent. For example, they will be taught that the letter ‘l’ sounds like lllll when we say it. Your child will then start reading by blending the sounds together to make words. Another word for this kind of blending is synthesising.

Phonics - Useful Parent Documents

Phonics - Supporting Reading at Home

• Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.

• We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound) 

• We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:
  • Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.
  • Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.
  • Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds. 

At the beginning of each academic year, we will hold an information session for parents and carers to find out more about what we do for Phonics, Reading and English at our schools. Please do join us. 

More support for parents and carers can be found here:

Essential Letters and Sounds Website Link

ELS - Phase 2 Pronunciation Video

ELS - Phase 3 Pronunciation Video

ELS - Phase 5 Pronunciation Video

At St Bartholomew’s we consider Reading to be ‘The Master Skill’ as it allows children to acquire an array of new knowledge and skills from across the wider curriculum. Reading fiction texts allows children to ‘get lost in a book’ and immerse themselves into the wonderful world of their imagination. We aspire to ensure that all children leave our school reading to the very best of their ability and ready for the challenge of the next stage in their education. 

Reading is a big part of what we do in school on a daily basis – reading is incorporated into everything we do.

We read individually, in pairs and in groups across school, depending on a child’s individual needs. In Early Years and Key Stage 1, we use a range of strategies, in addition to phonics, such as a variety of decoding methods, teaching high frequency words through sight recognition and discussion through picture books. Reading ambassadors from Year 5 go and read with the children in other classes – a treat to watch! We read in lessons, in assemblies and at every other given opportunity. Businesses’ volunteers enhance our reading provision every week hearing our vulnerable readers. 

Reading comprehension is taught as a whole class during daily timetabled lessons. In these sessions there is always an emphasis on vocabulary and one other reading domain. Novels are used to teach reading as well as a range of non-fiction texts. These texts are carefully chosen to ensure that there is progression and challenge across the school- there is also clear links between reading and writing as the same texts are used to facilitate both. 

It is vital that our children not only read, but that they are read to, therefore teachers read a variety of high-quality texts to the children on a regular basis. Listening to the change in tone, and different voices, can make it very exciting and appealing. Children love listening to stories, no matter how old they are. We share books, talk about books, visit the library…we make it a special time to sit and read together. It is also lovely and relaxing activity for the children to read independently, so we allocate time for children to sit and read a book they have chosen for pleasure. We are lucky that our children have access to a range of different books in our local library and class book corners from Nursery to Year 6. 
In school we also have and celebrate: 

• Reading challenges – in classes, year groups and sometimes for the whole school
• Reading Ambassadors
• First news and Wizz Pop Bang science magazine delivered to every KS2 classroom
• Book Week
• Book Fairs 
• The Summer Library Challenge

St Bart's Reading Spine

The reading spine contains a core set of texts that are read by children each term in school. Some form part of the English curriculum and others are read in story time sessions.

Children across school read a wealth of quality texts throughout the year. These include stories, non-fiction texts and poetry which are related to topic areas. Additionally, there are others that are for wider enjoyment and relate to the interests of children – these can change each year, and are therefore not included in the reading spine.

The texts in the reading spine have been chosen carefully to ensure they promote key principles such as equality, courageous advocacy, British values and develop positive SEMH.  Texts in the reading spine are organised into the following themes:

• Topic              
• PSHE
• Diversity       
• Picture Books
• Poetry 

Shared Reading

Reading with your child gives you special time together and helps develop your child’s language skills and imagination, creates happy memories and a lifelong love of reading.

Below are parent guides on shared reading:

Shared Reading Guidance

Reading Guides

Reading Aloud

Why should we keep reading aloud to kids even when they can already "read on their own"?  

This talk demonstrates the magic of read aloud and reminds us all why reading aloud is so essential - at school and at home. This talk is for parents and teachers who want to teach comprehension and connect with kids in powerful ways. 

Curriculum - Phonics & Reading - Chair of Governors Visit

It was wonderful to have a visit from  Sheila Banks  (our Chair of Governors) today. She enjoyed watching a phonics lesson in KS1 and working with children in class 5 as part of an Oracy lesson in Geography. 

Curriculum - Phonics & Reading - Book Reviews (Class 15)

Class 15 have worked hard on their book reviews. George won the class vote. Well done George!

Curriculum - Phonics & Reading - World Book Day 2024

Class 7 really enjoyed world book day, they dressed up as their favourite characters and read the book Room on The Broom. They learnt the rhyme in the book and the children were able to join in with the repetition. They wrote book reviews, new pages for their own versions of the book, with new characters and even illustrated them. We also had a visitor. She helped the children make informed choices about rhyme to help them create their own performance poem. They then learnt actions to the poem before preforming it to the rest of key stage one in assembly at the end of the day. They had an amazing time and learnt a lot in the process.

Curriculum - Phonics & Reading - Poetry Workshop

Well done to all of KS2 who created wonderful poems with our workshop to celebrate World Book Day.

Curriculum - Phonics & Reading - Book Reviews

These are the book and character review competition entries for class 13! Followed by the two winners Liepa and Sophia! Well done girls, check out their reviews in the second picture.

Curriculum - Phonics & Reading - Year 1 / Year 2 Reading Areas

Children in key stage 1 have enjoyed reading stories together at playtime and lunchtime in our special reading areas.

Children in year 2 have loved reading a wide range of pirate themed books in book club this week with Mrs McCaffrey. They have brought in their own books from home to share with their friends and talked about the characters and plot of the different stories. Children have compared books and participated in some fantastic discussions around prediction. 

Reading Rucksacks

Classes 1 to 6 have their own 'Reading Rucksacks' to help encourage children to read for enjoyment over the weekends. 

Each weekend 2 children from each class will have the opportunity to take home the rucksack to enjoy with their grown ups. Inside the rucksack there are a range of stories for grown ups to share with children and lots of other exciting things such as a torch, a cuddly toy and a treat!

Look out for pictures on the website of children showing how much they love reading!

Reading Rucksacks Gallery

5 Top Tips for Reading Together with your Nursery Child

1. Share books little and often. A great time to do this is as a bedtime story, every evening. Find somewhere comfortable and put away any distractions such as mobile phones.
2. Let your child choose the book. Encourage your child to hold the book themselves and turn the pages. Re-read favourite books and stories.
3. Talk about each part of the book. Some useful ideas are:
   • Look at the cover – what do you think the book is about?
   • Talk about what you see in the pictures.
   • Get them to say what might happen next.
   • Talk about how they think the story will end.
   • Discuss how the characters may be feeling and how the book makes your child feel.
4. Encourage your child to join in with the story through repeated words and phrases in the story or rhyming words. Young children love to learn their favourite stories off by heart and repeat them back to you – this is great for developing their writing skills when they get older, so do not be afraid to read their favourite books over and over again!
5. Most of all, remember reading is fun and you can share a story just by looking at the pictures and talking about what is happening.

We would love to hear about your home reading time. Feel free to post pictures or videos of your child reading their favourite story on Learning Journal or send them to nursery email address: nurseryhw@stbartsleeds.org.uk.

We have an amazing new library in school.

Here are some images of our library along with a couple of videos explaining the library rules, a tour and also the pupil librarians.

The School Library