Letters and Sounds

Letters and Sounds aims to build children's speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as to prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. It sets out a detailed and systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting by the age of five, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven.

Phonics is taught daily and is a fundamental aspect of teaching in EYFS (including our nursery) and KS1. 

Early Reading

At Willowdown Primary School, we use Bug Club and Rigby Star books to support early reading and phonics development at home and in school. We also encourage children to borrow books from our school library and read a variety of their own books at home. 

Vipers to Support Reading Lessons
We use the 'Reading Vipers' in our whole class and small group teaching. The Vipers approach helps to develop key comprehension skills and enables the children to become more successful readers, focussing on a number of key skills. We use this approach to dig deep into high-quality texts that are rich in vocabulary and challenge pupils of all abilities. 

V - vocabulary

I - infer

P - predict

E - explain

R - retrieve

S - sequence (KS1) summarise (KS2)

Over the course of a week, pupils will investigate a challenging, age-appropriate text and learn how to answer questions linked to the Vipers focus areas. Find the KS1 and KS2 Vipers guidelines below for examples of the types of questions that we work from.

At Willowdown Primary School, we are continuing our drive to encourage all children to read for pleasure. Research shows a positive link between reading frequency, enjoyment and educational attainment.  Furthermore, reading for pleasure has positive emotional and social benefits, improves text comprehension and grammar skills and increases general knowledge. 

All children are able to choose books to read in school and to take home for our school library and from class reading areas.  We set clear expectations for reading at home in each year group and Reading Records are monitored to track this.

Things we do at school:

We have many initiatives that are taking place in school over this academic year to further encourage reading for pleasure.

• Daily Drop Everything and Read
• Class books to support writing and our themes 
• School library 
• Whole school reading rewards - 'The Reading Rocket'

Things you can do at home:

• Ensure your child reads at least 4 times per week record their reading in their Reading Record
• Talk about what books they are currently reading
• Ask questions when listening to your child read aloud 
• Read books to your child / read books together
• Visit local libraries and bookshops

Stuck for what to read?

If your child is finding it difficult to know what they want to read, here are some ideas:

• Register on the  CLPE’s Core Books CLPE’s Core Books website for free to view regularly updated book lists sorted by age-range, genre, author or publisher.
• Visit Accelerated Reader Bookfinder which is an easy to use, free online tool which allows you or your child to search for books by interest-level and topic.  You can also find collections lists of the most popular books that children are reading at the moment.
• Go to a bookshop or a library and immerse yourselves in some of the great texts out there.

We greatly appreciate all the support you give in supporting and encouraging your children to read at home and we are looking forward to an exciting year full of reading ahead!