Early Reading & Phonics

At St. Wilfrid’s Catholic 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.

Sounds-Write

All of our teaching and support staff have been trained in the phonics programme ‘Sounds-Write’. Our teaching of reading and writing within the school is, therefore, based on the Sounds-Write programme. This begins very early on when children join in Reception and continues until a child is a confident and competent reader and speller. Sounds-Write is used around the world and is one of the DfE approved schemes.

The knowledge of sounds and symbols is an important starting point for understanding and using written language and we believe that a strong and consistent approach to the teaching of phonics is vital for our children to begin to access the rest of the curriculum. This is, however, used in conjunction with many other strategies to help children to begin to read and write.

In KS1, children read independently at least three times per week. They read and re-read  their Dandelion or Sounds-write decodable reader. Decodable readers are used when learning to read and only contain the phonetic code that the children 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. It also helps to consolidate the skills and sounds learnt from the Sounds-Write phonics sessions and supports the development of good reading strategies. This in turn helps to build reading fluency. Decodable readers will be given to the children throughout their time in EYFS, year 1 and for most of year 2 until the child has been exposed to most of the phonetic code.