Reading & Phonics

Reading is at the heart of the curriculum at Thomasson.  Reading is an essential skill to access all other areas of learning and for life. 

Teaching children to read is prioritised in school as it unlocks all other aspects of learning.  We believe that reading is the key to success.

At Thomasson we have high expectations of our pupils developing the range of skills needed to be strong readers, helping them to develop communication skills for education and for working with others outside of school and for life after education.

We believe that children learn to read most effectively by using a variety of approaches. We celebrate the written word in all aspects of our curriculum and in our environment. We have three main strands that underpin our teaching of reading, these are; word-level reading, reading for meaning and reading for pleasure.  As a school we promote the ‘love of reading’ and share books with our pupils at the earliest opportunity providing them with reading experiences and access to a range of different language and vocabulary.

Phonics

Phonics, is one way the d/Deaf children can learn to read. At Thomasson we teach children to read through a daily systematic, synthetic phonics programme called ‘Read Write Inc‘.  All staff follow planning from learning initial sounds to becoming fluent readers.  EYFS focus on Phase 1 developing their speaking and listening skills.

High quality phonics sessions are taught in all classes, enhanced by a multi-sensory teaching approach, aware of different learning styles including visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Pupils who still need extra support with phonic work are identified and targeted for intervention strategies if necessary.

Some of our pupils at Thomasson are unable to access phonics through an auditory/ oral approach. A variety of methods are employed to support each pupil successfully develop reading skills on an individual basis.

Visual Phonics by Hand (VPbH)

We use ‘Visual Phonics by Hand’ to support the teaching of ‘Red Rose Letters and Sounds’. Visual Phonics by Hand:

• Consists of one-handed visual cues which are based on the two-handed alphabet
• Comprises the 44 phonemes of the English language which are represented by easily learned handshapes.
• Handshapes are made near the mouth and mimic the shape of the finger spelled letter.

This supports children’s development of both phonic skills and lip-reading awareness.

Read Write Inc has specifically linked texts that allows the children to develop their reading ability in line with their phonic knowledge. We also have a wide variety of reading books in school to expose the children to a range of text types, fonts and styles. The reading books we have cover a range of genres to appeal to all interests. The books provide a systematic and structured approach for emerging and developing readers. Our reading books are organised into phonics phases to support pupils learning within school.

We have a purpose built and fully stocked library and children are encouraged to borrow books to take home and share with their parents. We run a range of reading for pleasure events throughout the course of the year and ensure that we use quality texts as a basis for all other work across the curriculum. Children are then encouraged to apply their reading and writing skills across the whole curriculum.

We ask that parents also support this by reading at home with their children as regularly as possible. Research shows that this will help their child to make increased progress.

Developing Early English – Choosing an appropriate strategy 

All of the children that attend Thomasson Memorial are individuals. This means that appropriate learning approaches should be considered for every child, especially when developing early literacy skills.

To aid this, we use the flow chart below to identify the most appropriate reading-development strategy for each individual.