South Norwood Primary School

The Power of Reading is a whole school development project, which engages children and teachers in the literacy curriculum with high quality books and creative teaching approaches.

The skills that children are taught in Literacy underpin all other subjects.  They enable pupils to communicate and express themselves in all areas of their work.  Teachers will always make cross-curricular links wherever appropriate and will plan for pupils to apply the skills, knowledge and understanding that they have acquired during Literacy to other areas of the curriculum.

Foundation and Key Stage 1 classes enjoy and participate in story time sessions reguarly.  Teachers in Key Stage 2 regularly share a range of narrative and non-narrative texts with the whole class.

Each class has a book corner.  As part of home reading, children should be selecting and reading a book appropriate to their level 3 times a week.  We encourage parents/carers to hear their child read unless they are at a level where the pupils can assess their own reading.  Feedback on home reading is made by parents/carers or pupils within the Home Reading Records.

Guided reading sessions take place for 20-30 minutes each day.  Pupils read with the teacher in a guided group session once a week.  The group are given a follow up activity linked to the guided group text during the next couple of days.  Other activities the groups will take part in during a week include; silent, independent reading, phonics and comprehension.  Children who require additional support with reading normally receive more regular opportunities with another adult.

For the Love of Reading

In the document below, there are some alternate ideas to truly engage your child in reading. In addition to this, there are some question prompts for you to use when listening to your child read. Click on the link below to find some exciting ideas that you can try with your child. 

Research shows that teaching Phonics in a structured and systematic way is the most effective way of teaching young children to read.  Almost all children who receive good teaching of Phonics will learn the skills they need to decifer new and unfamiliar words. At Stewart Fleming Primary School Phonics in the Early Years is taught on a daily basis and follows the Letters and Sounds programme. Children are taught the skills for segmenting and blending words and are introduced to new phonemes as part of a systematic synthetic approach. The teaching of Phonics continues in Years 1 and 2 as children are introduced to alternative graphemes, lesser known sounds and begin to learn some of the more complicated spelling rules.

At the end of Year 1 children are required to sit the Phonics Screening Check to assess their ability to segment and blend words. Children are presented with 40 words – a mixture of real and pseudo words and they are expected to apply their Phonics knowledge to read the words. If children are unsuccessful in Year 1 they have the opportunity to retake the test in Year 2. Intervention groups are set up for those children struggling with their Phonics learning and this additional support will continue in Key Stage 2 if necessary.

Below are some additional websites to use with your child: 

Phonics websites

http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/question/index/3 lots of information and guidance for parents/carers

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/ParentsMenu.htm a selection of interactive games for all phonic phases. Mostly simple games.

www.ictgames.com/literacy.html a great selection of games that link well with games in Letters and Sounds.

http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/ printable resources for each of the Letters and Sounds phonic phases.

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/ngfl/ngfl-flash/alphabet-eng/alphabet.htm Letter names come up in alphabetical order

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures/index.shtml Useful Apps for tablets:

http://www.nessy.com/hairyletters/ Useful app with interactive activities which we use at school.

http://www.letterschool.com/ A good app for practicing letter formation. You can purchase the full version, or download the free version (LetterSchool Lite), which contains all the features of the full version for a subset of letters and numbers, at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/letterschool-lite/id481067676 .

A good spelling programme gradually builds pupils’ spelling vocabulary therefore, when children enter Key Stage 2 they will have discreet spelling lessons three times a week. During these lessons children begin to understand the principles underpinning word construction, recognise how to apply these principles in their writing and develop the skills for proof reading. In Year 6 children are required to take a 'Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar’ test. We endeavour to prepare children for this test as early as possible and therefore make spelling and grammar a key priority in all curriculum areas.

At South Norwood Primary School we strongly believe that the more experiences children have the better writers they become. We therefore place a strong emphasis on bringing drama and role play into our literacy lessons, allowing the children to recreate those fantasy worlds that they so often read about. Hotseating, teacher in role and freeze frames are just some examples of the types of activities your children will experience through our diverse literacy curriculum.