At St Cuthbert’s reading is at the very heart of our curriculum, as we recognise it is the key to success in all subject areas.  Emphasis is placed on Early Reading from the very moment children enter our school in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Pupils are immersed in a language rich environment which places great value on listening to stories and rhymes from the very beginning.  Children develop the key prerequisite skills required in order to develop a solid phonological awareness. We recognise that having a good understanding of the auditory components enables children to develop the listening and attention skills required to distinguish between discrete units of spoken sound.   

Reading for Pleasure 

Reading for Pleasure is given a high priority at St Cuthbert’s.  We have recently refurbished our EYFS/KS1 communal library space and this is used for group reading / story telling sessions. Right from the very start of their educational journey, children in the Early Years are introduced to our library loan system whereby every pupil selects a book of choice to share at home. In addition to this, we liaise closely with our local town library who visit school to offer story telling sessions and support our families in offering memberships with the local library. 

We also take part in other whole-school events such as World Book Day, Reading Buddy events and Mystery Reader. There is dedicated daily time within all class timetables for reading material for pleasure such as a class novel (see English webpage for selected key texts).

Class Reading Areas 

Each classroom has a quiet, relaxing reading area which promotes Reading for Pleasure and provides children with a comfortable place to enjoy a good book.   

Teaching Phonics

Through our ELS Systematic Synthetic Approach to the teaching of Phonics and Early Reading, children acquire the critical knowledge that is essential, not only for reading, but for spelling and writing. The direct teaching of Phonics, Early Reading and Writing is a high priority and takes place on a daily basis with additional opportunities to apply their knowledge built in to the curriculum.

At St Cuthbert’s we believe that through the satisfaction they gain from decoding words successfully, children develop a love of reading.  Revisiting high quality decodable texts, which are carefully matched to each individual’s growing phonic knowledge, enables children to develop the automaticity and fluency needed to comprehend and become immersed in stories.  To allow this to happen, children are exposed to high quality Essential Letters and Sounds Oxford Reading Scheme books, covering a range of different genres and interests.  The texts available to children for both school and home reading purposes are updated regularly. Half termly 1:1 assessments ensure that children’s books are matched closely to individual levels of ability. 

High quality and consistent approaches are used to deliver Phonics across the school.  Through careful planning, observation and teacher assessment, our phonics programme is delivered at a fast pace with all learners achieving success.  We ensure all parts of the daily phonic lesson are fully interactive for all children.   

The Explicit Teaching of Early Reading

At St Cuthbert’s CE Primary School, we follow the Essential Letters and Sounds Phonic Scheme.  This is a fast-paced Systematic Synthetic Phonics Scheme that is delivered with rigour. It is used alongside a dedicated ELS Reading Scheme (Oxford University Press) to provide complete fidelity. ELS is compatible with the teaching sequence of

Letters and Sounds and was validated by the Department for Education in June 2021.

All members of staff are trained by our Reading/Phonics Lead to teach ELS ensuring that we have an expert team. As a staff team, we meet weekly to update ‘best practice’ and provide consistency and continuity in our approach to the teaching of Phonics and Early Reading. This allows all children to receive high-quality Phonics teaching every day. Classrooms are well resourced to ensure that every child has the resources required to learn to read well.

Reading is a central part of every pupil’s life at our school. We instil a love of reading from the very beginning of children’s education. We believe all children can become confident readers during their time in Primary Education. Children’s love of reading is evident through their continuous engagement, desire to read for pleasure and their understanding of a range of texts, authors and illustrators. This is further developed through our curriculum.

To ensure all children learn to read, we teach Phonics from the very start of EYFS. Phonics is explicitly taught every day. Children use their growing Phonic knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and have many opportunities to practise reading decodable texts precisely matched to their phonic knowledge. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and during small group and whole-class reading sessions. We recognise that reading is a fundamental life skill and aim to ensure that all children leave our school able to read well.

ELS is a whole-class teaching model. This means that every single pupil has the same opportunities when learning to read. Learning to read well, early, is a priority for every child. Children who may find it harder to learn how to read are given extra support from a trained member of staff every day. Daily Phonics lessons continue in Year 1 and Year 2 to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.

Teaching Progression and Sequence

We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language. As a result, children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover. The main skills taught are as follows:

1. Grapheme / Phoneme Correspondence (GPCs): Children are taught to match letters or combinations of letters (Graphemes) with their corresponding vocal sounds (Phonemes). Some correspondences are represented by single letters. Other correspondences are represented by more than one letter such as; ch, sh, ai, ow, ay, or (digraph), igh, air, ear, ure (trigraph).
2. Letter Formation: This is given high priority and taught daily alongside the introduction of each letter in the alphabet and grapheme/phoneme correspondance. It is crucial that our children are taught the correct formation of each letter consistently. ELS have their own mnemonic rhyme to ensure that children are taught to follow the correct sequence of movements and orientation. 
3. Blending: Children are taught to orally blend using robot arms and blending hands. They are taught to decode by blending CVC words by sound talking each phoneme and blending those sounds quickly in order to read the word.
4. Segmenting: Children are taught to encode words by stretching the phonemes in a word and segmenting those sounds using their robot fingers. This helps with the retention of sounds within a word so children can record/write the corresponding letters in the order in which they hear them. 
5. Harder to Read and Spell Words: These are words with irregular parts, such as ‘who’ and ‘I’. Children learn these as exceptions to the rules of Phonics. Introducing these HRSWs early in the year increases reading fluency as they frequently occur in early reading texts and enable children to become competent readers at the earliest opportunity.

Through the ELS progression we teach children more rarely used GPCs

(Grapheme/Phoneme Correspondences). This means that they can decode and read more words with increased fluency.

ELS is supported by a wide range of fully decodable texts. These cover both fiction and non-fiction and are exciting and engaging for all our pupils. We match the home reading texts to each child’s current phonic knowledge to ensure that they consolidate their most recent teaching and learning at home.

Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support children’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.

At St Cuthbert’s, we begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs (four letters spelling one sound).

We teach children to:

• Decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
• Encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.

The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.

ELS is designed around the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Interventions are delivered within the lesson and any child who is struggling with the new knowledge is immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, targeted intervention is used. These interventions are short, specific and effective.

ELS is designed to make use of all the teaching time during the phonics lesson. Providing targeted support where required reduces the need for additional interventions meaning that there is minimal disruption to curriculum teaching time.

Children are assessed in Week 5 of each half term to ensure that any specific gaps can be targeted immediately.

We reinforce the link between reading and writing in every ELS lesson through the independent application of the children’s understanding. We also ensure that all our teachers reference the learning from ELS lessons when writing as part of the wider curriculum.

At the end of Year 1 your child will complete a phonics assessment which is made up of real and nonsense words. This assesses how well children can use their knowledge of phonics to read words. You will be told your child's result at the end of Year 1 and if your child has or has not met the benchmark grade. If your child doesn't achieve the benchmark grade then further intensive support will be given in Year 2. 

For the few children that require further support to consolidate their phonological understanding through Key Stage 2, support is delivered in small intervention groups.