At Holne Chase, we firmly believe that every child has a right to learn to read well. Our ambition is to enable children to become life-long readers who develop a passion and love of reading to support them in all areas of the curriculum as well as the opportunity to get lost in a world beyond their own. Ultimately, our ambition is for our children to become learners who enjoy reading and have a repertoire of reading skills which they can use to open the door to new discoveries, knowledge, creativity and confidence.

From the very outset, we place huge emphasis on ensuring every child masters the early reading skills and are able to decode fluently through the systematic teaching of synthetic phonics. From this, all our children will develop life-long reading habits and a love of literature. Through a text-rich curriculum, explicit vocabulary teaching and a language rich school, we expose children to new worlds, experiences and ideas, expanding their horizons. Our choice of texts will both value and confirm students’ linguistic, cultural and social backgrounds as well as introducing them to contexts beyond those they are familiar with.

In Early Years and Year 1, we follow the Essential Letters and Sounds systematic synthetic phonics programme which is designed to teach children how to read through the act of decoding and blending. An SSP teaches children the link between the sounds of our language (phonemes) and the written representation of these sounds (graphemes), or the spellings of the sounds contained within the English language.

Phonics is taught daily from the moment a child starts school in Early Years and follows a specific sequence, which develops their early reading ability as they progress from oral blending to reading words. Alongside the phonics sessions, we immerse the children in phonics in all areas of the curriculum to support their developing reading and writing abilities. Each half term, the children are assessed on their phonics knowledge and these assessments are used to assign each child to a specific levelled reading book to read at home.

All children will be given a levelled book, which provides children with home access to high-quality reading texts to the specific level of their reading ability. This will either be assigned based on their phonic knowledge or their reading fluency and comprehension understanding. These books are for children to read at home to practice and develop their reading skills. The children also have access to Reading Buddy, which provides the children with a plethora of e-books assigned to their relevant level.  Please see your child’s reading record to access their individual account.

Sharing your book at home

It is really important to read from your child’s reading book every day. Listening to your child read will enable them to have pride in their progress and create opportunities for your child to continue to develop their reading skills.

• Before your child starts reading, chat about the cover and title. Talk about what the book might be about.
• As your child reads, get them to pause every now and then. Ask them questions to check that they understand the story so far.
• Listen carefully as your child reads. It is quite easy when learning to read, to only focus on the start of the word. Check that they are reading the whole of the word, including any ending such as -ing, or -ly.
• If your child is struggling with a word, help them to break it down into individual sounds, then blend the sounds together. Breaking words down into syllables can also help. With longer or compound words, support children to identify elements of the word they might know or find easier to decode, for instance, rain/ing, kind/est, and foot/ball. Cover up part of the word and encourage children to read it in smaller chunks.
• If your child is still struggling, it’s okay to tell them the word.
• Finally, don’t forget that praise is really motivating for children as they read.

We promote a love of reading to all children by enabling children to be read stories throughout the school day as well as providing opportunities for children to Read for Pleasure. Our new fantastic jungle themed library contains a fantastic variety of high-quality texts, which children have access to. Each week, the children visit the library where they have the opportunity to take a book home to enjoy with their family at home.

Each half term, we invite our children and their families to join us for ‘Books Over Breakfast’ in which our community can enjoy teas, coffees, pastries and most importantly… books! This school community event supports our children to develop a love of reading and provides a perfect opportunity to enjoy some of our high quality picture books.