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Watlington Community Primary School

Reading & Phonics

At Watlington, we believe reading is the key to being successful across the curriculum. 

We start teaching reading in Reception following the Twinkl phonics scheme and using the Rhino Readers books.  

Reading is taught throughout the curriculum but also through explicit instruction in phonics lessons and in English lessons. Children in Key Stage 1 have up to an hour of phonics each day and are grouped according to which phonics level they are working at.   In Key Stage Two, children are given reading comprehension in a variety of lessons and for morning work on a frequent basis.  Pupils in all years take part in guided reading sessions.  

Our text based English curriculum allows pupils to read books they may not have selected themselves, but exposes children to books from different cultures and eras and different genres. 

We have the pleasure of using reading volunteers who listen to children read each day, pupils across the school also have a reading 'buddy' that they share books with.   We encourage pupils to read each night as part of their homework and celebrate our 'regular readers' in our end of term assemblies. 

To share our enjoyment of reading, we invite parents once a term to our reading cafes, where parents share a book and activity with the class.

To support your child with learning phonics, please see video links below on segmenting and blending. 

Segmenting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uEUeduXNGw

Blending - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2CNZoOshew