Our vision for reading at Holy Family allows pupils to become confident, fluent readers who will develop a lifelong love of reading. We aim for children to be exposed to diverse texts across all areas of learning. By immersing our children in quality literature, we allow them to visit new places, explore new ideas, meet new people and develop their cultural spirit.  

In readiness for the world, we believe we need to teach children how to comprehend, interpret and apply reading skills in all curriculum subjects. We teach children through whole class and small group guided reading sessions. The skills of inference, enquiry and interpretation are taught discretely and children are encouraged to apply these skills to a range of 'real life' texts.

Children are encouraged to read a wide variety of genres, and they have access to a range of books through our decodable phonics scheme, our school library and their own classroom library. 

To encourage a love of reading, all children have access to the school library. The library has been designed to support our online reading program, Accelerated Reader.

Reading at Home

Reading with your child can have a long-lasting benefit for their future. There is a difference in reading performance equivalent to just over a years schooling between young people who never read for enjoyment and those who read for 30 minutes a day. 

There are lots of ways you can help your child get more out of reading a story. Have a look at the sheets below for ideas about what to do when reading with your child.

EYFS & KS1 parents

KS2 parents 

Click here for recommended books for each year group.

Reading Awards

Children are expected to bring their reading book/library book into school every day. The expectation is that children read at home at least three times a week and that parents sign their child's reading record. We reward lots of reading at home by allowing children to come to school in their own clothes for every 50 reading points that they earn. They will also receive a certificate to acknowledge their ongoing guard work. 

At Holy Family we teach children to write using a cursive script from Reception. We know that using a cursive script helps most children become more confident, fluent writers and also helps improve spelling. 

We believe that good presentation skills are important as we want children to value their own work and for others to do the same. By introducing and teaching a consistent cursive script from Early Years, our aim is then for children to be able to focus upon the content of their writing from Year 2 onwards rather than on the mechanics of handwriting. 

Below is a glossary of the terminology that children are expected to know and use in each year. 

At Holy Family it is our vision that every child will learn to write by being given real and exciting materials and opportunities. We will show and explain everyday occurrences to the children and inspire them to write about them. We will share excellent writing models to inspire children to emulate a wide variety of styles. We encourage children to read their work for enjoyment, to read it aloud to others and provide audiences for writing. We want children to have an understanding that writing has a real purpose and encourage our children to share their writing with the wider world.

English writing topics are based in stories by well-known authors and the children are given time to immerse themselves in the story and get to know the characters and story format. 

We believe that central to learning is creating a lifelong love of reading and books. This starts from the first moment that children enter our Reception class, where we encourage and create opportunities to read, write and show interest in letters, words, sounds and books. 

We use the Sounds-Write phonics programme to teach our children to read, spell and write. Sounds-Write is effective in teaching pupils to read, spell and write because it starts from what all children know from a very early age – the sounds of their own language. 

Our approach teaches the conceptual understanding needed to become an effective reader;

• That letters are spellings of sounds; visual language is a representation of spoken language
• That a spelling can contain one, two, three, or four letters. Examples are;
  • s a t
  • f i sh
  • n igh t
  • w eigh t 
• That there is more than one way of spelling most sounds – the sound 'ae', spelt as in 'name' can be represented as in 'table,' 'rain,' 'eight,' 'play' and so on
• That many spellings can represent more than one sound; the sound 'e' in 'head,' 'a-e' in 'break,' or 'ee' in 'seat'

Reading and spelling also requires expertise in the skills necessary to make use of the alphabet code and pupils need to be able to;

• Segment or separate sounds in words
• Blend or push sounds together to form words
• Manipulate sounds – take sounds out and put sounds into words

Sounds-Write provides opportunities for practising these skills o an everyday basis until pupils achieve the automatic required for fluent reading and spelling. 

During daily phonics sessions, there are opportunities for practitioners to regularly assess children's understanding. Regular monitoring of the assessment outcomes allows teachers and practitioners to ensure that children are making expected progress. This data allows us to intervene in different ways. 

Children in Year 1 will complete the Phonics Screening Check during the summer term. We strive for all of our children to pass the Phonics Screening Check and additional support will be put in place for those children who require it. The children who do not achieve the pass mark in Year 1 will take the test the following academic year when they are in Year 2. 

At KS2, those children who do not pass the Phonics Screening Check will continue to follow the Sounds-Wrte phonics programme.

How Can Parents Support Children at Home?

Reading at home everyday has the biggest impact on your child's learning and progress. Below are some suggestions that will support you with supporting your child.

• Use letter sounds rather than letter names. This will avoid confusion and will reinforce the learning being done at school.
• Avoid adding an extra vowel when trouncing letter sounds e.g 'buh' 'duh'
• When listening to your child read, encourage them to have a go at unfamiliar words by encouraging them to 'say the sounds and read the words.'
• Visit the Sounds-Write website for further information, support and resources.
• Attend the Sounds-Write parent workshop
• Learn more about how we teach phonics and how you can support your child at home using the online course.

Spelling

Throughout the school, spellings are taught using the National Curriculum objectives for each year group. The focus of spelling sessions are to review, teach, practise and apply taught spelling patterns in a way that children can apply to their writing.