Reading, Phonics & Spelling
Intent
At St Paul’s, we nurture a love of reading as the gateway to all learning. We want every child to become a fluent, confident reader who can understand and enjoy texts of increasing depth. Our intent is that all pupils — whatever their starting point — develop strong phonics knowledge, accurate spelling and secure comprehension skills.
Implementation
We teach daily, systematic phonics using Essential Letters and Sounds (Oxford). Lessons are practical, multi-sensory and interactive, with children applying their phonics in real reading and writing contexts. We use high-quality decodable books that match children’s phonic knowledge, alongside shared and guided reading sessions that develop fluency and comprehension. Spelling is taught explicitly and practised across the curriculum. Reading for pleasure is promoted through daily story time, a rich range of texts, and nurturing spaces such as our library and book corners.
Impact
Children quickly gain the skills needed to decode and spell words accurately. They read with growing fluency, expression and understanding, and talk with confidence about stories and information texts. By the end of KS1, the vast majority of pupils achieve the expected standard in phonics, read independently with comprehension, and develop a lifelong enjoyment of reading.
Reading with your child
Reading books are changed once per week. This allows your child to re-read each text several times, building their confidence and fluency. This is especially important as they begin to learn that the sounds within our language can be spelt in different ways.
For children, re-reading words and sentences that they can decode (sound out) until they are fluent (read with ease and precision) is a key part of learning to read. By reading texts several times, children have the greatest opportunity to achieve this fluency.
The texts sent home are carefully matched to the teaching taking place in school. Your child will be practising what they have been taught in school with you at home. We will only ask children to read books independently when they can decode these by themselves.
How to pronounce sounds
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Harder to Read and Spell Words
HRS words, are words that children should know even though they have not yet been taught the relevant GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences) within these words. HRS words are common in the English language, and it is important that children can read and spell them. When teaching a new HRS, we always identify the graphemes (letters which represent the sound) within the word that make it tricky, e.g they (ey is tricky). Please see the Reception and Year 1 documents which outline the order and term in which these words will be taught at St Paul’s Primary School.