Reading Curriculum and First Class Phonics
Reading Curriculum:
We have recently revamped our approach to reading. Our intention is for children to be exposed to high quality extracts from a range of genres and authors. The extracts have been carefully chosen to enrich the curriculum and promote children to read for pleasure. Year 2-6 follow the new structure, where children are exposed to a different extract each week (for year 2 this is on a bi-weekly basis). Year 1 and EYFS use a carousel structured aligned our use of First-Class Phonics.
Reading is taught for a minimum of 3 x 30-45minute lessons per week. The first two lessons focus heavily on building fluency: using entomology and the context of the text to support children to break down tricky vocabulary. The extract is modelled to the class and the children echo read altogether or in small groups to build confidence and understanding.
The third lesson is comprehension based on the extract. Children focus on three main areas of VIPERS: Retrieval, Inference and Vocabulary. Children are then challenged regarding the other VIPERS domains. This lesson ensures that children are given direct support in how to answer these types of questions and how to use the text to support their learning.
Each class has created a reading spine which documents which extracts/books will be used over the academic year. Teachers have carefully planned extracts to develop the existing curriculum or to link with British Values, calendar events and reading for pleasure. Extracts cover fiction, non-fiction and songs/poems and are colour coded. These colours then directly correlate with the colours seen in our reading books.
Categories:
Fiction = Green
Non-Fiction = Yellow
Songs/poems/images = Blue
Phonics and Early Reading:
First Class Phonics at Lyndhurst
In our school we use First Class Phonics:
- We have a high-quality, consistent approach to the teaching of phonics
- We use child-friendly resources so that all children are actively engaged and having fun whilst practising and applying phonics
- Our phonics lessons help to develop children’s vocabulary and promotes a love of reading
- The scheme is matched to and exceeds the expectations of the EYFS ELGs and National Curriculum for Reading in KS1
- First Class Phonics prepares children for success in the Phonics Screening Check and beyond
- We have high expectations for developing early reading, spelling and writing
- First Class Phonics enables children to immediately apply their new learning into reading or spelling within the phonics lesson
- We have Is also matched to the most commonly-used phonically decodable reading schemes – meaning you can still use all your existing phonically decodable books.
First Class Phonics teaches children to produce phonemes with accurate pronunciation. Pure pronunciation is essential for accurate blending. Children are taught to ‘sound out’ and blend through extensive teacher-pupil interaction going from highly supported to independence. First Class Phonics has a structured progression for teaching graphemes which slows down the pace of teaching but increases the pace of the learning. With First Class Phonics, there is time to teach and practise but there is also time to revisit and embed.
There is a systematic progression for teaching word structures, sentence structures, sentence types which matches up with expectations in the most widely-used phonically decodable reading schemes.
First Class Phonics provides every child with the opportunity to practise reading a range of words in every session. Children are actively engaged in their own learning by taking part in a familiar range of ‘hands-on’ activities using Pupil Sets of word and picture cards. These activities provide opportunities for children to practice reading and also develop key skills: how to share, take turns, listen to each other and collaborate. We prioritise active learning so every child can participate in activities during the practice part of the lesson. No more lessons where a few children are involved and the rest just ‘look on’.
Lesson Structure:
In the First Class Phonics lesson, our children learn to decode High Frequency Words using their phonic knowledge with the help of a loveable puppet – Izzy the Busy Bee! Izzy is always very busy because there are so many HFW words! FCP teaches children how to read and spell common exception ‘tricky’ words, using another loveable puppet – Trevor the T-Rex! Trevor is tough enough to cope with ‘tricky’ words! First Class Phonics develops children’s vocabulary using another cuddly puppet – Luna the Moon Unicorn. Luna introduces challenge through her ‘Unicorn’ words – uncommon real words. She helps children to be ready for the Phonics Screening Check as her Unicorn words are the type of real words that appear in the Check.
Luna also helps children to decode Alien words, thereby applying all of their phonic knowledge and skills. Children love to learn with these ‘phonic friends’!
First Class Phonics provides a direct link between reading and writing through the weekly teaching sequence. This means that children always learn to read words before being asked to spell them!
Teachers teach new vocabulary using engaging picture prompts. These same picture cards are used during dictation as a visual prompt and concrete link to the dictated word.
With First Class Phonics, there is an emphasis on using manipulative resources in Reception for spelling – before children in EYFS are ‘ready to write’. Although some children may not have developed the physical skills required for handwriting, they will have the phonic skills and understanding required to spell words and short phrases with magnetic letters or letter cards. Our spelling activities can be differentiated to allow all children to make progress in their spelling regardless of their physical development or learning needs.
Spelling lessons always provide opportunity for teachers to teach spelling through dictation and for children to practise spelling using fun, engaging activities. Teachers also dictate sentences so children can apply their learning into writing a meaningful caption to match a picture prompt. This picture also provides a concrete link to the dictated sentence.
First Class Phonics provides a clear progression so that children are taught how to spell Common Exception Words: Izzy the Busy Bee’s High Frequency words (phonically decodable) and Trevor’s Tricky Words.
Captions have been specially written to provide opportunity for children to regularly practise spelling these Common Exception Words within phrases and sentences. There is a structured progression for these captions which includes sentence types, sentence structures and grammatical features linked to the Year One and Two National Curriculum.