Reading
In Early Years and Key Stage 1, all children have daily, whole-class, phonics lessons which includes time spent reading phonetically decodable texts linked to their previous and current learning.
As children progress into Key Stage 2, they have a daily, whole-class, reading lesson. This is delivered through a high-quality text linked, where possible, to the central theme for the term. This approach enables us to expose our children to high-quality literature and develop their fluency and prosody. Specific reading techniques are used to ensure all children join in reading aloud. Additional scaffolding may be required for some children, for example, the teacher informs the child in advance which part they are expected to read. Teachers plan in advance which child reads which part of the text in order to ensure children are being targeted to meet their particular needs.
As well as reading aloud, our children also get the opportunity to analyse the texts they read in what we call ‘Close Reading’. During these sessions, the children are guided to have in-depth discussions about what they have read and answer questions to demonstrate their understanding.
Please see below for how the knowledge and skills we expect the children to know progresses as they move through the school.
Phonics
We use the Monster Phonics systematic synthetic phonics programme at Netherfield. Monster Phonics makes learning fun and more memorable. Rather than relying on rote learning, Monster Phonics uses colour-coding to promote understanding, which leads to children becoming confident, independent learners.
Monster Phonics enables English to be learnt in a simplistic way. The 26 letters of the alphabet and combinations of these letters make 44 different sounds (phonemes) in English. There are 144 ways (graphemes) to spell these 44 sounds. For example, the sound A is spelt 8 different ways; ay (play), ai (train), a-e (make), a (apron), ei (vein), eigh (eight), ea (great), ey (grey).
Monster Phonics uses the 10 monsters to categorise all sounds into 10 simple areas. Furthermore, each monster has a different colour and that colour also represents the sound. This means children can recognise the monsters and the colour associated with the sound, which helps them spell, read and write.
The use of monsters and the games associated with Monster Phonics ensures Monster Phonics is a fun and engaging way to learn, further accelerating the speed of learning for all.
Please see below for how the knowledge and skills we expect the children to learn progress through the Monster Phonics programme, and click the picture below to explore the Monster Phonics website.
