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.

Phonics

Synthetic phonics is taught daily. Children learn actions to support the learning of new sounds.

In reception all children are taught phases 1,2 and 3.

In year 1 children consolidate phase 3 before moving on to phase 4 and 5.

Intervention and support is given to children who are showing difficulty in retaining the sounds and applying their decoding.

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