Reading and Phonics

Reading

At Oasis Academy Don Valley a love of reading is embedded into our curriculum through key texts in English lessons, reading ladders, ERIC and story time. A child is heard read at least twice a week by an adult or peer reader to ensure fluency and expression is developed and reading at home is encouraged daily through ‘rocket readers’. Our students reading journey begins with phonics in EYFS and continues into KS1. This is paired with a strong focus on the understanding of words and developing their understanding of what they have read or heard read to them in guided reading or story time. Our curriculum non-negotiable is that each class from EYFS up to Y6 has daily ERIC time (everybody reading in class) which is then followed by a novel study session. Within novel studies, we teach explicit reading skills and develop the comprehension of our students through high quality texts. Guided reading groups are also incorporated in our daily timetable to ensure that children are provided with opportunities to apply the skills learnt during novel studies into a book that is applicable to their stage of reading.

Phonics

Phonics is taught explicitly in EYFS, Year 1 and where appropriate Year 2 or above for 30 minutes each day. Each session begins by recapping sounds previously taught, teaching a new sound and identifying that sound in different contexts and then applying the new sound to a writing activity. We follow the Letter and Sounds scheme and track children’s progress to ensure learning is progressive. Where possible we teach phonics as a whole class to ensure all children are able to read age appropriate texts fluently by the end of year 1.  We then use the children’s phonic knowledge to bridge into the spelling expectations from the national curriculum right through to year 6.

Click here for the EYFS Reading Alien
Click here for the KS1 Reading Alien
Click here for Year 1 Phonics Screening presentation
Click here for the KS2 Reading Alien