Reading at Ranelagh

Early reading 

In EYFS and KS1, we have daily, discrete phonics lessons. As of 2024, we have begun using the Little Wandle as our SSP (Systematic Synthetic Phonics) programme. Following their phonics lesson, children then have the daily reading practise sessions to apply their decoding skills by reading a book matched to their current phonics ability. These practise sessions are vital at developing children's confidence; allowing everyone to feel that they are achieving as a reader.

The children will always have both a decodable phonics book to practise their phonics skills and a library book to share with an adult at home to grow their love of reading. 

Reading

Developing fluency is a key part of becoming a proficient reader and, at Ranelagh, we believe that becoming an accomplished, fluent reader is the single most important transferable skill that we can equip our pupils with. 

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) defines reading fluency as: The ability to apply and identify the correct pronunciation of written words immediately and without conscious effort. It involves smoothly and effortlessly decoding words while also comprehending and interpreting the text.

There are three interlinked aspects of fluent reading:

• accuracy – reading words correctly
• automaticity – reading words at an appropriate speed without great effort
• prosody – using appropriate pace and intonation (pitch and tone to highlight an expression).

As children master their understanding of phonics and can confidently apply phase 5 sounds in decodable books at a speed of 90 words per minute, they progress onto the Little Wandle fluency programme. During our daily 30 minute fluency lessons, we continue to develop children’s alphabetic knowledge so they can decode the new words they meet in books. It also teaches prosody and reading fluency through repeated reading activities. We develop children’s language and comprehension by chatting about each chapter. We connect to children’s background knowledge and use prosody practice and repeated reading to help children understand what they have read. Most importantly, children grow their reading stamina and enjoyment through reading books at the right length, so they are successful.

In KS2, reading is taught daily for half an hour. These sessions are either the Little Wandle fluency programme for children that need to continue to develop their fluency or lessons teaching reading through whole novels. These novels expose all children to high quality text and new vocabulary that they otherwise would not come across. During this time, teachers and TAs model the fluency, the reading process and develop higher order reading skills, such as inference. At Ranelagh, we refer to these skills as the VIPER skills which stands for:

Writing

We are a Power of Reading (PoR) school which means that we put quality children’s literature at the heart of our English curriculum to foster a love of reading and writing. Teachers model the writing and planning process through writing sessions in English,  where ideas are collected and developed. Children work in groups, pairs or individually to write narrative and non-narrative texts based on a range of appropriate genres. Grammar and punctuation are contextually taught in English lessons as well as recapped during daily grammar meetings. Spelling rules are also taught during these grammar meetings and tested at the end of the week. Spellings rules are taught from the National Curriculum and are carefully chosen to relate to the writing purpose to allow children to apply spelling rules in different, meaningful contexts. Objectives taught in English sessions are also used to develop writing across the curriculum and we use a well developed and researched approach which encourages oracy alongside writing development. This is called 'Talk4Writing'.

At Ranelagh, we have high expectations for quality and presentation and we use the Penpals scheme throughout the school to ensure consistency in our approach to handwriting.

Oracy

We want our pupils to learn ‘through talk’ as well as to learn ‘to talk’. High quality talk is deliberately planned for in a progressive way across our curriculum, to ensure children have the opportunity to broaden their vocabulary, deepen their subject knowledge and articulate themselves well. All of these opportunities empower them to better understand themselves.

Useful links

Reading Eggs (Fast Phonics) https://readingeggs.co.uk/ 

Phonics Play https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/resources  

Little Wandle https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ 

Epic reading https://www.getepic.com/

Accelerated reader (Usernames and passwords should be in the front of your child's homework book)

https://global-zone61.renaissance-go.com/welcomeportal/2248283