Reading and Phonics

We begin in the Foundation Stage with picture books and learning letter sounds utilising ‘Bug Club Phonics’ supplementing with additional resources where required, and continue throughout a child’s time with us, to provide stimulating and creative opportunities for reading.

All children have a session of phonics (the systematic learning of letter sounds) each day, using the actions from Jolly Phonics and progressing through the Bug Club phonics phases in Reception and Key Stage 1.  By KS2 Phonics is replaced by Spelling for almost all children.

Reading in year 1 is taught using the Daily Supported Reading programme.  These daily sessions of 30 minutes focus on learning behaviours and promoting fluency, enjoyment and understanding of texts.  Key stage 1 pupils move on to Destination Reader as their reading skills develop.

Across Y3 – 6 at Mendlesham Primary School, we teach daily 45 minute reading lessons that follow a new reading approach called ‘Destination Reader.’ Destination Reader is an approach to teaching reading which can be applied to all texts. Its main focus is on:

• Key reading strategies which support comprehension.
• Learning behaviours which support pupil talk.

We explore and unpick extracts of text together using our focus reading strategy. Then, pupils practice the same strategy in partners with a different piece of text. Our children do lots of reading and talking through their ideas about books with their reading partners. On Fridays, we answer questions about a text, using our reading strategies to help us. The 7 key reading strategies that we teach are as follows:

Predicting           Summarising               Clarifying             Making links              Evaluating Inferring                    Questioning

​The learning behaviours enable pupils to engage with a text in pairs or groups and use the strategies to help them unpick and understand the text in a meaningful way. Furthermore, at Mendlesham Primary School, we are always striving to promote reading for pleasure. Books are there for us to enjoy and we want our pupils to develop their own reading preferences and a general love of reading. Overall, our aim is to develop our students to able readers who have the skills they need to read independently by the time they leave us and who read books because they love to. If we can achieve that, we know we’ll have made a holistic difference to their life-long learning.

All children are encouraged to use our school Library and borrow a book to read themselves or share at home with their family.

Reading Provision at Mendlesham