At Halley it is very important to us that reading is top priority from the very start of the school journey and that reading is promoted exceptionally well with families from the beginning. Children begin to learn to read on their very first day at school by listening to lots of stories, rhymes and songs; bringing books to life. Adults read to the children very regularly in school and are keen to make sure that all children learn to read themselves as soon as possible.
We use Read, Write Inc. as our learn to read programme, and have seen excellent developments with children’s reading and writing skills. Read, Write Inc. is a phonics-based approach to literacy teaching and all lessons involve reading and writing activities. We have a committed team of teaching staff, who teach this programme with passion and fidelity, in order to secure very good progress for all our children.
Staff have high expectations of the sounds and the words that children will learn. The children will learn to read by learning synthetic phonics and through learning high frequency and common exception words.
Expectations and standards are high as we aim for all our children to become fluent, confident and passionate life-long readers. Read, Write Inc. programmes are carefully managed by the Reading Leader with lively, engaging and inspiring lessons
Children enjoy their lessons immensely, rapidly learning a very complex alphabetic code, which they apply to both reading and writing. Read, Write Inc. teaching begins formally in Reception, with the aim that most children complete the programme by the Autumn term of Year 2.
Partner practice is embedded in every stage of the teaching cycle, ensuring children are given lots of opportunities to formulate and discuss their ideas, develop their comprehension and make links to their own experiences. Fostering a love of reading is one of our core purposes and we use a range of high quality storybooks to make explicit links to the Read, Write Inc. text children are reading in class.
From the very beginning of the programme, children’s writing skills are developed through phonetic knowledge. In Reception, pupils start by practising forming written sounds (graphemes) and short, phonetically regular (green) words. Children soon move onto writing short, coherent sentences and later, descriptive, imaginative compositional pieces of writing.
Lots of concrete experiences are provided during the teaching cycle to further support children’s writing, and the use of Read Write Inc. teaching strategies throughout the day reinforces children’s confidence in and enjoyment of literacy across the curriculum.
Here are some documents and links regarding Early Reading at Halley
HH Early Reading Curriculum Map
Parent Fims
When children at Halley have completed the RWI phonics programme they move on to a Reading Scheme called Master Readers.
