School News:
Phonics
At Hutton Rudby Primary school we greatly value the importance of breading. Reading is the basis of everything. Therefore, it is essential that we equip our children at the start of their educational journey with relevant skills to become excellent readers and share a love for books and reading. We do this through the focused teaching of phonics through letters and sounds. Five years ago, only 50% of children in Year 1 achieved the required pass mark in the statutory Year 1 phonics assessment. Over the last 3 years results in the Year 1 phonics assessment have been at 100%, 93% and again 93% last year.
The prioritisation of reading is all about ensuring that children are equipped with the skills they need to access the curriculum as a whole, regardless of their starting point. We have a ‘sharp focus’ on making sure that children have the phonics knowledge, language comprehension and communication skills that will form the foundations of their future learning and will help them avoid falling behind.
We undertake the rigorous and systematic teaching of synthetic phonics from the beginning of Reception, i.e. starting with the easiest sounds, and progressing to the most complex. At the start of each year we undertake a baseline assessment of phonics in Reception and Year 1, with continued frequent and detailed assessment used to identify any pupil that’s falling behind the pace of your school’s phonics programme, so that they can be offered targeted support to address any gaps right away.
Reading books closely match the phonics knowledge that pupils are being taught and offer them plenty of opportunities to practise reading and re-reading the grapheme-phoneme correspondences that they have learned – both at school and at home. They hear a wide range of texts read aloud in the classroom, including stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction to develop their vocabulary, language comprehension and love of reading.
Please see below our Phonics colour band overview information sheet which we use to track the children’s colour band against their phonics phase and reading age.
Please see below our 2019/20 Phonics action plan linked to our school development plan.
Phonics Early Reading Hutton Rudby School Development Plan 2019
