Intent

At Asquith, our shared vision is that every child learns to read and continues to read – widely and often. We believe in providing a learning environment where imagination and creativity can be fuelled. Through our rigorous phonics curriculum, we ensure pupils develop the skills, knowledge and resilience they need to develop as confident readers who enjoy books. We ensure that children develop a love of books, stories and rhymes right from the start. We believe that being a fluent reader with a passion for stories and texts promotes a wide vocabulary and imagination, contributing to children’s wellbeing and ability to make a positive contribution in society.  To achieve this, we make sure that there is a sharp focus on ensuring that younger children gain the phonics knowledge and language comprehension necessary to read and spell. We ensure that reading is prioritised to allow pupils to access the full curriculum offer and that a rigorous, sequential approach to the reading curriculum develops pupils’ fluency, confidence and enjoyment in reading. Children are empowered to make progress in reading and are determined to improve their word reading and fluency capabilities because they have the teacher expertise, resources, support and feedback to allow them to succeed as confident readers. At all stages, reading attainment is assessed and gaps are addressed quickly and effectively for all pupils. At the early stages of learning to read, reading materials including reading-books and weekly home-access videos are closely matched to the learners’ phonic ability and current learning. Children demonstrate responsibility by taking their reading books home and bringing them back to class on the correct days.

Implementation

During their Early Years, our learners at Asquith experience a language rich environment which concentrates on exposing children to new and relevant vocabulary, speaking and listening skills and phonological awareness including key skills of oral blending and segmenting. Children are immersed in high quality texts and rhymes from an agreed core reading spine during shared and independent learning time. This phonetic, vocabulary and print rich environment paves the way for a strong start when children are introduced to our Read Write Inc. Phonics Programme, alongside our diverse cross curricular teaching of reading and writing.

Impact

By the end of Foundation 1, children can orally blend words and recognise some set 1 graphemes, so that they are ready to begin reading simple CVC words in reception.

By the end of Foundation 2, children can read and write simple sentences, including four and five sound words, some digraphs and common irregular or ‘red’ words, so that they can build their fluency and comprehension skills in Key Stage 1.

By the end of Key Stage 1, our pupils can read aloud age-appropriate texts accurately and with sufficient speed for comprehension. This means that we can focus on developing their comprehension, preparing them well for transition to Key Stage 2. Their good decoding skills mean that they have a sound strategy for decoding unfamiliar words when they come across them at whatever stage or in any subject, even into secondary school.

Children become accurate and confident decoders with a love of reading.