At Glebelands we feel that it is vital that we instill and promote the value and enjoyment of reading from the very beginning of a child’s school journey.

Before Starting School

During the new intake’s Stay and Play sessions in the Summer Term, the importance of reading at home and at school is promoted with parents and carers and all families are given information on how we teach reading and how they can help support this at home.

The children are given a book bag containing a picture book donated by Glebelands PTFA to continue to highlight our commitment to promoting reading from the start.

Phonics

Once all the children have started full days in September, they are introduced to graphemes and phonemes using our validated phonics programme called Success for All Phonics (SfA Phonics). This comprises a daily phonics session and a daily reading session of phonically decodable shared readers which consolidates the skills learnt in the phonics session and allows them to apply them to their reading.

Children’s progress is regularly monitored closely and each half term the children are assessed using the FFT Reading Assessment Programme (FFT RAP) which shows the progress the children have made and identifies areas for development.

Reading

At various points throughout the school day, children gather to listen to stories, poems, rhymes and songs shared by all members of the Foundation Stage team. These are re-read to help build familiarity and confidence. Relevant books are displayed and used in each learning area within the setting.

Children are actively encouraged to take a book home from the outset. The children begin by taking wordless picture books home to encourage discussion. Once the children have been taught the first eight graphemes: s,a,t,p,i,n,m,d, the children are provided with a shared reader book matched to the phonics they have been taught. These shared readers are accessed through the SfA Phonics’ parent portal, and we are working towards providing physical copies of the shared readers for the children to take home.

Alongside this, we have aligned other phonetically decodable books to match the SfA steps in order to increase the range of books available to children. Information about how to access the parent portal is given to the parents weekly on a reading card which also tells them the GPCs being taught that week and which number shared reader book they need to access.

Reading at Home

The parent portal also provides useful videos for parents so that they can support their child effectively. There is also space for the parent and teacher to record the child’s reading. The children are also encouraged to take home books of their choice to promote reading for pleasure. Parents are made aware through the use of the Powerful Reading bookmarks that this is a book to share rather than for their child to read independently.