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Curriculum

English: Phonics & Reading

English is taught daily with work appropriately matched to all abilities. We aim to nurture children's love of literature and language to ensure they have the knowledge, skills and confidence to read and write throughout their lives.

With parental support, we aim for all children to:

  • speak clearly and confidently in any situation.
  • listen actively and respond appropriately, developing knowledge and opinion.
  • read fluently for both pleasure and information.
  • write clearly and with confidence in any given genre.
  • use spelling rules, phonics and grammar accurately.
  • be able to proofread their own work and make amendments and improvements.

 

Phonics

Phonics is the Department for Education's recommended strategy for teaching children to read.  Phonics runs alongside other teaching methods to help children develop vital reading skills and give them a real love of reading.

We follow the 'Read Write Inc' phonics scheme in our daily phonics practice across EYFS, KS1 and KS2 if necessary.

You can find out more information about the scheme by following this link:

How the Read Write Inc. phonics works - a parent/carer’s guide (youtube.com)

For tips on how to listen to your child read, follow this link: 

Parents: how to listen to your child read a Read Write Inc. storybook (youtube.com)

For a more comprehensive list of phonics video clips and support, follow this link: 

Ruth Miskin Training - YouTube

The phonics screening check is conducted in Year 1, summer term. The video clip below provides a short overview:

What is the Phonics Screening Check | A Guide for Parents (youtube.com)

Reading for Pleasure 

In essence, Reading for Pleasure is choosing to engage with texts for your own enjoyment. It is the reading we do for sheer happiness, for relaxation, for the emotion we experience or the information that we seek. 

When children find texts they enjoy, they want to read more. They seek out other books by the same author or in the same series, read particular comics and magazines regularly, or pursue with a passion information about their favourite football team, pop group or endangered animal, for instance. Children’s engagement with particular characters, thirst for knowledge about the world, and response to the emotional power of texts drives their desire to read.

At Coddington CofE Primary School and Nursery, all children have access to texts that tempt, that invite and that sustain their engagement. They are motivated to keep reading (or returning to) these texts because intrinsically they are relevant to them and their friends. In the heart of the school, is the Liam Andrew Library where every child can explore a large range of fiction and non-fiction texts. 

Due to the school's dedication and commitment to develop every child as a reader, we have joined the Lincolnshire Reading Pledge and the East Midlands English Hub and work alongside similar schools to share best practice and ideas. 

Our Bookworms Newsletter below demonstrates some of the ways we promote reading for pleasure in school. 

 

Reading Comprehension 

Alongside learning to read words and develop a love of reading, teachers embed comprehension skills. 

At Coddington CofE Primary School, we use VIPERS is an acronym to aid the recall of the 6 reading domains as part of the UK’s reading curriculum.  They are the key areas which we feel children need to know and understand in order to improve their comprehension of texts.

VIPERS stands for

Vocabulary   - READING VIPERS Vocabulary - YouTube

Inference -   READING VIPERS Inference (youtube.com)

Prediction - READING VIPERS Prediction (youtube.com)

Explanation - (videos coming soon!)

Retrieval -

Sequence or Summarise - 

The 6 domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics: decoding, fluency, prosody etc.  As such, VIPERS is not a reading scheme but rather a method of ensuring that teachers ask, and pupils are familiar with, a range of questions and skills.  

 

VIPERS Reading Domains – Toftwood Infant and Junior School Federation