Reading & Phonics

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you
learn, the more places you’ll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

At Christ the King, we understand that English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. We provide a high-quality education in English that aims to teach each individual pupil to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them.

Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually.  The high quality literature that we use to teach English, plays a key role in such development.  Reading also enables pupils both to acquire new knowledge and to build on what they already know.

The programme of study for reading at EYFS , Key Stages 1 and 2 consist of two dimensions:

Word reading – the ability to decode words- will be taught  through the use of the synthetic phonics scheme ‘ReadWriteInc.’ Children will be bench marked to assess which level of books they should be reading and to ensure that they progress appropriately.

Comprehension – Children’s comprehension skills will be taught through high quality discussions with teachers and teaching assistants, individual and group reading times and whole class reading activities. We have moved towards a whole class reading approach and we have found that children have become motivated to read and discuss more challenging texts.