Early Reading and Phonics

Please click here to read our Reading Strategy. This document provides an overview of how we teach Reading at Sherwood with fluency, understanding and a love for reading at the heart of our work.

At Sherwood Primary School the children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 take part in a 25-minute phonics session each day. Our daily phonics lessons follow the guidance set out in Red Rose Letters and Sounds Scheme. Phonics sessions aim to build children’s speaking and listening skills in their own right, as well as to prepare children for learning to read and write by developing their abilty to blend and segment words.

We value reading as an essential part of children's learning at Sherwood.  All children are given a reading book which they take home on a daily basis to read with parents. When parents have listened to their child read, they write a comment in the accompanying reading diary. In addition to this, the children take part in regular focussed guided reading sessions.

Our Reading Scheme begins with Phonics Phase 1 with wordless books and those with simple decodable words and short phrases that are closely matched to the children's learning in their daily phonics sessions.

Along their reading journey through the Phonics Phases, the children will be provided with opportunities to practise their decoding skills (aligned to Red Rose Letters and Sounds), improve their reading fluency and to deepen their comprehension skills whilst reading a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction texts.  As they become more fluent and confident readers, the scheme also provides texts that will: build their reading stamina; provide challenge; and introduce the children to wider reading for pleasure and interest across the curriculum, developing higher-order comprehension skills which will prepare them for the Sherwood Reading Pathways.

Examples of the reading schemes, that provide children to consolidate key learning from phonics sessions, are: 

• Project X;
• Pearson Phonics Bug;
• Pearson Comic Phonics;
• Ransom Readers;
• Rising Stars;
• Oxford Word Sparks;
• Oxford Hero Academy.