Phonics and Reading Schemes

The children in Early Years and Year 1 take part in a daily phonics session. Teachers follow the guidance of `Letters and Sounds’ to support their planning and teaching. We also use materials from Babcock Education to ensure that we are covering the Age Related Expectations in both phonics and spelling, linked to the new curriculum in Years 1 and 2.

When the children are confident with the first 19 sounds that they learn, they are given a decodable reading book to practise their reading at home. These decodable books are from a range of schemes such as Floppy’s Phonics, Big Cat Phonics and the Phonics Bug Range.

As the children become more fluent and their sight vocabulary develops, they will be given the opportunity to read more widely from a range of texts organised into book bands.  These book bands contain a range of books from different reading schemes such as Usborne, Oxford Reading Tree, Rigby Star as well as a range of ‘real’ books as we  feel it is important for the children to experience a broad range of different text types.

More deatails about Book Bands at Heather can be found here: Book Band information for parents December 2018

The children’s reading experiences are broadened by books from the class and school libraries and teachers use high quality texts in both themed and literacy lessons across the school.

We ask that parents try to establish a regular reading routine at home to support their children in their learning, as this is one of the easiest ways for you to get involved and help your child to make important progress.