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Home Reading
Word Reading at Hindhayes
Phonics is at the heart of word reading at Hindhayes School. Over the last three years the school has worked hard to develop the teaching and learning of word reading. School reading material has purchased and carefully aligned with the programme, ensuring that children are able to access individual and group reading material that closely matches their phonic knowledge and therefore promote best progress in word reading. Tea, toast and reading in the mornings provides children with a chance to read their decodable phonic books whilst having breakfast with a parent. Interventions provide extra and targeted practice for those children who make the slowest progress (the lowest 20%).
At Hindhayes School the children are given many opportunities to read throughout a week including reading individually, participating in guided reading sessions, reading signs, labels and instructions and also completing shared reading conducted by the teacher with a large text.
Teachers teach the skills such of sounding out, pointing to words, reading punctuation, using expression and decoding unknown words during daily Sounds-Write sessions. The main strategy for decoding an unknown word is to “say the sounds and read the word”. These skills are then developed during guided and shared reading sessions as well asking crucial comprehension questions to check understanding. All children will be part of a guided reading activity once or twice a week using a book they could not read on their own.
Children will regularly have their individual reading book changed either once or twice a week. Individual reading is conducted in school and at home to allow children to practice the skills and knowledge they have gained during guided and shared reading sessions with a book they can read on their own or with only a little help.
The main reading spine of books that children will start their home reading journey with is Dandelion Readers. This series of books follows the sequence of sounds teachers are covering in class and so provide a seamless link between learning and practice of reading.
Once children are fluently decoding most words they come across (usually by the end of year 1 and the beginning of year 2) children will move to books which are not so heavily linked to phonics and are designed to promote reading comprehension. These will increase in difficulty through a colour band system rather than through linked phonic units.
Books that children bring home will be colour banded:
Band 1 Pink
Band 2 Purple
Band 3 Yellow
Band 4 Blue
Band 5 Green
Band 6 Orange
Band 7 Black
Band 8 Grey
Band 9 Brown
Band 10 Beige