Phonics and Early Reading Statement

Brookfield Primary School – Be the best you can be!

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader." -Margaret Fuller

Intent

At Brookfield Primary School we know the basic skills of reading are vital for life opportunities for our children and that reading is the key to opening up the doors for success. The importance of reading for children cannot be underestimated. Reading for pleasure can benefit a child’s education, social and cognitive development, their wellbeing and their mental health. Numerous pieces of research conducted and commissioned by the Book Trust have discovered the profound benefits of reading for a child’s development. One study details the effects of reading on later literacy skills, facilitating social interaction between adults and children and encouraging children to engage with the world around them. It also states how reading can be a ‘stable source of information’ throughout a child’s life. This stability allows them to access text in a constant fashion and can be especially beneficial for children growing up in challenging circumstances. With this in mind, we place reading at the heart of our curriculum and believe that all of our children can become fluent, confident and able readers who have a love of reading!

Implementation

The teaching of Phonics and Early Reading Our curriculum, for Phonics and Early Reading, has been carefully developed to ensure every child can achieve excellence in reading. Children can experience a sense of awe and wonder as they read a story for the first time, discover different characters and make discoveries based on what they have read. We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

Impact

By the time our children leave Year 6 at Brookfield Primary School we aim for all pupils to: Develop an ability to communicate their ideas effectively and confidently. Have the skills to decode words in order to be able to read fluently with an understanding of what they have read. Develop confidence in reading a wide variety of genres and text types. Read widely and often to develop a love for reading for pleasure. Become confident, fluent readers with a good understanding of grammar and punctuation and in possession of a rich vocabulary.