Policy: Phonics and Early Reading Policy 2022
Subject Ambassadors: Mr. C. Storey (Reading); Mrs. A. Green (Handwriting, Spelling, Grammar)
Link Academy Councillor: Mrs. K. Norman
Statements of Intent:
Our Vision:
A place where our children, adults and community can grow and thrive rooted in
Kindness, Fellowship and Confidence.
Reading – At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary, we want children to foster a love of reading from an early age by exposing them to a rich breadth of texts across all curriculum areas. Reading opens up a new world for children and allows them to explore different places, characters and cultures. We embed a culture of reading for pleasure, through the rigorous teaching of phonics (Little Wandle) in the early part of their journey, developing confidence and fluency, to give them the skills to not only decode words but to understand the deeper meaning of texts. Focused interventions are implemented to ensure all children can read with fluency, confidence and enjoyment. Reading volunteers are used to support our 1:1 reading across the school and are supported by our Subject Ambassador to deliver our high standards in reading. The use of the Domain Reading Dogs are used thought out Key Stage 1 and 2, to support the children’s understanding of the comprehension aspects linked to reading. The children are also supported in whole class guided reading sessions, where they can spend time unpicking texts and put their comprehension skills into practice.
At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary, all children are exposed to a multifaceted approach to learning. Carefully chosen, engaging texts are used to stimulate children to be creative in lessons, across all subject areas, making their ideas and thoughts come to life. The use of language and ambitious vocabulary is key to providing the children with confidence to use their skills during their school careers and beyond. Our children are offered a diverse range of quality texts that reflect the wider world, for example. We also utilise our local authors to inspire and work with our children to develop their creativity and imaginations. Set story times across all key stages enable the children to spend time to both enjoy and learn from books.
Writing – At Stanhope Barrington C of E Primary, children are taught in line with the National Curriculum, focusing on the key skills and knowledge needed to develop their writing ability. A range of genres and approaches are used to expose the children to the world of writing, to become confident and expressive writers themselves. Texts are carefully selected to both challenge and develop the children’s understanding of the world. This journey begins instantly in Opal, with our Nursery children and is built on throughout the Learning Zones to ensure the children have access to quality, well-chosen texts, appropriate to their age and ability during their time at Stanhope C of E Primary. Children are supported to use checklists in their writing and in KS2 can independently take ownership of the quality of their work, knowing what is needed to move onto the next stage of their learning.
Children explore and understand new and ambitious vocabulary, across all subject areas, and are encourage to use it independently within their writing. Both boys and girls are engaged and motivated through a wide range of thought provoking and an open-ended plethora of materials, carefully chosen to set their imaginations alive.
Gross and fine motor skills are developed and mastered in the lower end of school. A rigorous handwriting scheme allows the children to develop a clear understanding of cursive letters that develop into a clear and well-formed join. Children are encouraged from an early age to take pride in their work and this is carried on throughout their school career.
Opal Learning Zone
“I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff!” – To start the year the Opal Learning Zone have been focussing on the traditional tale ‘The Three Little Pigs’. The children have had provision that allows them to retell and sequence the story. Here the boys were using the pig spoons to act out the story. Reggie said, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and blow your house down.”
All of the children have been able to recite parts of the story and have been engaged when accessing the linked continuous provision.
Amethyst Learning Zone
AMETHYST LZ – Long Term Literacy Plan
Reading Skills – This half-term the children have been challenged to utilise their phonics knowledge to develop their fluency in reading sentences. One area of the Continuous Provision is dedicated to reading. Today the children had to work independently to identify the Phase 3 words that were hiding in the sentences.
What is the initial phoneme? – We have all been working hard with our phonemes. The children have been accessing the continuous provision putting their learning into action. All the children have shown progress as we have been identifying initial phonemes and orally blending phonemes to make words.
Sapphire Learning Zone
Book of Butterflies – For our latest literacy topic, we have used the literacy shed video ‘Book of Butterflies’. The video was open ended and allowed us to write some fantastic narratives all about the character in the video finding the rare golden wing butterfly. The challenge was to include some adventurous adjectives as well as a range of connectives for the Year 2 children.
Making sandwiches – In Literacy, we have been reading the book The Tiger Who Came to Tea. In this story, the tiger eats all of the food in Sophie’s house so we decided to make him some sandwiches. We followed instructions to make jam or chocolate spread sandwiches then we all had a try, they were delicious! We then wrote up the instructions at the end of the topic using imperative verbs.
Ruby Learning Zone
Poetry – In literacy this half-term, the children have been studying poetry. They looked at several different types of poems that used the device of repetition, with some using rhetorical questions, and then moving onto looking at free verse poems. The children loved performing their poetry for each other, whether reciting other poet’s work at the start of the term and building up to writing and performing their own by the end, with some even doing it for a large audience at church!
George’s Marvellous Medicine – This term our class text has been ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’. The children have enjoyed reading about George and his antics and have used the text to complete a range of work on instructions. They wrote out George’s own recipe and then created one of their own: coming up with bonkers ingredients and ways of mixing them and using the language of instructions to share them.
Way Back Home – During the previous half-term, Ruby children used the short story video “Way Back Home” to help them write a four-part narrative. The children learned about the importance of description in a build-up section to build suspense, and how the events in the problem and resolution need to be linked to each other.
Emerald Learning Zone
How to Live Forever – We have enjoyed reading this picture book in the Emerald Learning Zone. We have looked at how to write a balanced argument using a range of interesting sentence openers. After writing our argument we wrote a prequel to the story. This required us to use DADWAVERS for our sentence openers as well as including relative clauses and semi-colons.
My Name is Not Refugee – In Literacy we have used the picture book My Name is not Refugee to support our writing of diaries. The children have used the boy’s perspective to write detailed and emotional diary entries about his journey as a refugee.
Understanding a character’s perspective – We are reading Stone Age Boy in Literacy, and today the children explored the characters through drama. At first, they explored actions to show emotions without the use of words. We the progressed to adding speech to further emphasise how two characters were feeling when they first met.
Diamond Learning Zone
The One for All – In literacy, the children have been learning all about Geoff and his love of Heinz Beans! The children wrote a fantastic biography explaining how his love of beans started from the age of 4 and how he ended up working at the Heinz factory. Their biography tells the reader all about his family, his education and his achievements in life.
Alma – We have been learning about the story of Alma in Literacy. From an innocent, young girl to a trapped soul inside of a doll, the children have been writing setting descriptions and stories linked to the theme of mystery and tension. We used our knowledge of micro-expressions, imagery and figurative language to write our final piece of work, a 2-perspective story.
Cosmic – In literacy, the children have been reading ‘Cosmic’ by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. They have been very engaged in this exciting and fun story about an 11-year-old boy who convinces everyone he is an adult by entering competitions to ride into space, pretending to be a school teacher at his new high school and test driving a brand-new Porsche! The children have been working hard to write a variety of different genres such as: an itinerary, a letter, a persuasive text and a story.
Archived Information
You can view our archived literacy information on our website.
