Phonics & Spelling
At Orchard Vale, we want every child to love reading. We aim to provide a wide range of books to appeal to all types of reader. These books are age appropriate and matched to the ability of the child. Please click here to view the current recommended reading list.
Phonics:
Phonics is taught through the delivery of Read Write Inc. and is taught from EYFS. RWI is used throughout the school including the RWI Fresh Start programme.
About Read Write Inc Phonics - Ruth Miskin Literacy
Read Write Inc.
Read Write Inc. Phonics is a DfE-validated systematic synthetic phonics programme with a whole-school approach to teaching early reading and writing.
It teaches children to read accurately, fluently and with understanding, to spell, and to write their own compositions.
Who is it for?
Read Write Inc. is for children learning to read in Reception, Years 1 and 2 and for struggling readers in Years 3 and 4. It is also suitable for pupils with SEND in older year groups,
Direct Teaching
Direct teaching underpins Read Write Inc. It is the quickest route to ensuring all children learn to read and write. Every day, children learn new sounds, and review previous sounds and words.
Children apply what they have been taught by reading words containing the sounds they know in matched decodable books and other texts, and write these sounds in individual words and, later, sentences.
Children learn to read through banded reading books from a wide range of schemes to ensure breadth at every level. We use home school link books to encourage a dialogue between home and school about reading.
Reading for pleasure:
It is important that children have time to read for pleasure. All classes have a well stocked reading area with a range of texts types available. These are all age appropriate matched texts. Classes also have an allocated time of 15 minutes per day to immerse themselves into a whole class novel. Children are also encouraged to read daily and log this. By reading daily this impacts progress in both reading and writing. In KS2 children are able to earn rewards for reading by high flying readers or the tri reading tournament challenge. Daily reading is taught in a variety of ways within KS2. This includes comprehension skills and developing stamina, ensuring there is a variety of texts which both excite and challenge all readers.
Schoolreaders
We are proud at Orchard Vale School to work alongside Schoolreaders. Established in 2013, Schoolreaders matches volunteers to local primary schools - focusing on schools with the greatest need - where they give one-to-one reading sessions. Schoolreaders goal is for all children, regardless of background, to leave primary school being able to read well so they can go on to access their secondary education fully and maximise their future life chances. We are proud to be a partner school which provides our pupils with this valuable extra reading time each week. Visit schoolreaders.org for more information.