Reading

At King’s Park Academy we believe that reading underpins the entire curriculum and therefore put it at the forefront of pupil’s learning. Our aim is for every pupil, irrespective of background, to become fluent and confident readers. From the moment pupils join King’s Park Academy, we encourage them to build progressively on reading skills whilst engaging them in high quality, enjoyable texts. We do this through rigorous and meticulous planning, carefully monitoring the sounds and reading skills pupils are being taught, regular half termly assessments to monitor outcomes and ensuring the books they are reading are in line with these. This gives our pupils the opportunity to embed and apply new learning before moving onto more challenging texts. This not only develops their skills as readers but fosters a love of reading, something we hope they build upon and keep for life. By embedding reading into our curriculum (carefully choosing a range of challenging texts from a wide variety of authors and genres) we ensure pupils are exposed to reading opportunities consistently, giving them the opportunity to embed and extend their understanding in a range of contexts.

We teach phonics using the Read Write Inc (RWI) synthetic phonics scheme. This begins at the start of Reception and continues until the end of Year 2 or earlier if they complete the programme. When pupils have progressed through the scheme, they move onto RWI Comprehension which supports their fluency and comprehension until the end of Year 2.

KPA Reading Strategy 2024-25.pdf

Top tips for reading with your child.pdf

Fresh Start Reading Intervention

Read Write Inc. Fresh Start is a catch-up and intervention programme with proven results, for pupils in KS2 still learning to read. It teaches pupils to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension, to spell correctly and compose their ideas for writing step-by-step.

Developed by Ruth Miskin, Read Write Inc. Fresh Start uses a proven phonics-based approach and:

Accelerates pupils’ progress with finely levelled Modules, supplemented by age-appropriate Anthologies.
Engages pupils with high-interest, age-appropriate reading and writing materials that are matched to their increasing knowledge of phonics and ‘tricky’ words.
Supports EAL pupils with a greater emphasis on comprehension, as well as revised punctuation, vocabulary and grammar activities.
Includes a clear structure to help you fit Fresh Start into your timetable, with step-by-step teacher guidance for all lessons and with day-by-day lesson plans that integrate all reading and writing activities.

After assessing our pupils half termly, we target pupils across Years 3-6 whose reading age is below their chronological age with the Read Write Ins. Fresh Start reading intervention. This targeted intervention, lead by professionally trained TAs, leads to rapid progress in pupils’ reading ability, as well as increased confidence with reading.

Reading for Pleasure

At King’s Park Academy we love to celebrate reading and encourage reading for pleasure! All of our pupils look forward to World Book Day and the fun activities we will do based around reading each year. We are fortunate to have a wonderful, welcoming and well-resourced library in school which classes visit throughout the week to listen to new stories or texts and to borrow books to read for enjoyment.

Read, Write Inc - Phonics

Read Write Inc. Phonics is a programme that uses systematic phonics to teach all children to read. The daily programme is started in reception and most children follow the scheme for two years. First, the sounds are taught in a specific order as the English language is very complex. Phonics is the method of teaching reading through the identification of sounds and graphemes. All words are made up of phonemes, also called sounds e.g. in ‘mat’ we have the sounds ‘m’, ‘a’, ‘t’. A grapheme is another name for the letters we use to write the sound.

When teaching the sounds, the children have the opportunity to say the sound, read the sound as well as write the sound within the same lesson. We teach phonics so that your children will have the tools to read any word. First, they learn one way to read the 40+ sounds and blend these sounds into words, then learn to read the same sounds with alternative graphemes. The children then move onto reading words in the Ditties and Storybooks. Each Storybook is carefully matched to the sounds they can already read – setting them up for success. Writing and sound recall continue to be part of the taught phonics lesson. Tricky red words which can not be decoded using phonics are taught as part of the programme.

Phonics Parent Presentation.pdf

Fred talk games.pdf

Reading

Fresh Start Reading Intervention

Reading for Pleasure

Read, Write Inc - Phonics

Read, Write Inc a Guide for Parents:

RWI sound pronunciation

Amazon sell the same resources we use in school