Reading

The skills of reading, writing and speaking and listening are vitally important, and will have a direct influence on all areas of the curriculum.

Our aim is to encourage our pupils to have a love for reading and writing and have a good understanding of vocabulary in the written and spoken format.

Reading

At Clifford Primary School, children are offered a wide range of reading materials, from their own class reading corners, topic books that are displayed around the classroom, or the school library.

Children have the opportunity to hear teachers read stories, poems and non-fiction books daily. Books are chosen from the reading spine, to ensure that pupils experience a wide range of books.

Reading comprehension lessons enables our pupils look deeply into different texts learning new language and widening their imagination.

Teachers model answering comprehension questions around vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and sequencing / structure.

‘VIPERS’

We encourage pupils to read with intonation, pitch and tone. To encourage performance children are regularly given the opportunity to read / perform poetry to the whole class or school.

We encourage parents to support their child with reading, by encouraging them to regularly hear their child read and promote the love of reading.

The Phonics Programme

At Clifford Primary , we have chosen to use Bug Club Phonics, a comprehensive teaching programme and DFE approved Systematic Synthetic phonics scheme.

The scheme follows a proven progression and research has found that children have made significantly more progress in reading than those not following the scheme. Not only has Bug Club been found to be successful academically for children, but it has also been shown to increase positive attitudes to reading and a great motivator for reluctant readers, boosting children’s confidence and enjoyment of reading right at the beginning of their reading journey.

The Bug Club Phonics programme follows the teaching sequence of letters and sounds and lessons are structured in the same way each day with an introduction, revisit, teach, practise and apply element to every session, providing the children with consistent routines that they can become familiar with. Our teachers at Clifford implement a multi-sensory approach in the teaching and learning of phonics which enables the children to learn from visual, audio and kinesthetic activities. Throughout the programme, teachers supplement the provided materials and embed the taught skills through a range of activities that they have identified to be successful. This helps to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills as well as ensuring the lessons are fun, interactive and engaging.

As well as teaching phonics, children are taught the common exception high frequency words.