"Leaders rightly see reading as the doorway to learning, enjoyment and success. They make sure that all pupils learn to read as soon as possible."
(Ofsted, February 2020)
"The most important starting point is to read to children. Reading to children is the best way of encouraging them to love books and reading.”
By reading stories aloud to children every day, you are forming a link for them between reading, comfort and love. When you love a book, your children will want to hear it again and again! Children thrive on repetition, so when you’ve read Room on the Broom for the hundredth time, remember you are hardwiring their brains for success."
(Ruth Miskin, 2019)
We are committed to every child learning to read as quickly as possible. We are extremely proud of our high achieving Phonics Screening Check results in Year 1. We are in the top 2% of all schools nationally. We follow Ruth Miskin's 'Read Write Inc Phonics' programme daily. In 2023 98% of our children passed the Phonics Screening Check, way above the national average of 79%.
We are a “Get Reading. Keep Reading. Change Everything.” school. We use the highly successful Read Write Inc. Phonics programme to teach our children to read, write and spell. Our children do well in the phonics screening check and by Year 2, the majority are fluent readers with the best chance of success in the end of Key Stage 1 tests.
Read Write Inc sessions take place each day for all Reception and Year 1 children with no exceptions, as the pace and consistency of the programme is a key element to developing reading skills for all children which is integral to effectively learn the rest of the school curriculum.
Our ultimate aims and objectives within the Read Write Inc programme are for the children to be able to learn and apply sound blending skills and to learn to segment words in order to be able to create skilled and confident readers. Children also learn to read and spell words that do not conform to regular phonetic patterns (High Frequency Words) and decode both fiction and non-fiction texts through discussion, performance and teacher led activities.
Read-a-lot-children do well at school; they read in two days what many children read in a year. They absorb the vocabulary, grammar, ideas and, above all, knowledge.
Everything hangs on children wanting to read: begging, nagging and testing do not get children to want to read. Children are like us - they only read if they want to.
I don’t think there’s a big secret about what to do; we need to show children how much we love stories. Read great stories, poems and non-fiction every day, all through school. What we love today they might read tomorrow.
Ruth Miskin.
Ruth Miskin shows you why pronouncing sounds in a 'pure' way is the most effective for teaching children how to read. You can find out more about Ruth's approach at www.ruthmiskin.com