Early Reading and Phonics
Early Reading
At the Nightingale Federation, we place great emphasis on and share the enjoyment of early reading, storytelling, and stories. From our youngest pupils in the Ark Nursery at Thomas Bullock, we have dedicated times that are carefully planned to foster a lifelong love of learning. Alongside this, we encourage and facilitate spontaneous storytelling, sharing books we love. This places a high emphasis on oracy and developing key vocabulary, closely linking to our wider curriculum and the ‘storytelling’ aspect of our RWI phonics storybook sessions.
In our classrooms, you will see stories we have read and enjoyed. Our youngest classes have ‘reading buddies’, where they can snuggle up and share books and stories either by themselves or with others.
We host weekly parent reading breakfasts in our Reception classes across the Federation, where families and siblings are welcomed into the classrooms to enjoy some warm toast and share books and stories together. This has been hugely successful in its first year.
Before children are able to decode words, they begin by reading pictures from a very young age. They use pictures to explore the world around them and, linked with their growing imaginations, they begin to tell stories and make connections to familiar experiences. For a recommended picture book list to support children’s early reading, please see the link below:
Phonics
At The Nightingale Federation, children are taught systematic, synthetic phonics is taught through the Ruth Miskin, Read Write Inc. Phonics programme. This teaching begins with our Nursery pupils from the start of the Spring Term and feeds progressively into our reception class and beyond. Children are taught in groups:
- to all pupils in Nursery, Reception, Year One and Two.
- to any pupils in years Three and above who need further support in learning to decode.
Our qualified teaching and support staff have all undertaken additional Read, Write Inc. Phonics training and continue to keep up to date with current practices and theories to support the delivery of lessons.
Alongside our mainstreamed phonics teaching, identified pupils receive additional tuition with the 1:1 tutoring programme; designed to support pupils to ‘keep up’ and not require additional ‘catch up’.
In our Reception class and beyond, where children are blending to read words, our storybook sessions are underway and a love of reading is begun as children practice reading with increased fluency and intonation using their ‘storyteller’ voices.
To ensure our phonics teaching is always pitched appropriate to your child, our Reader Leader team conduct individual pupil assessment each half term or more frequently if a need has been identified or a change is anticipated. These provide the perfect opportunities for our pupils to show off all they have learnt so far and are often enjoyed by all.
Further information for parents can be found:
https://www.ruthmiskin.com/parents/
A7 Mini FlashcardsHandwriting PhrasesReading at Home Booklet 1RWI Phonics and Early Reading WorkshopRWI Reading at HomeProgression of Skill