Reading and Responding to Texts

Across the school, we read and respond to texts through discussion, storytelling and drama. Children learn to read with phonics, using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme. Once they are fluent, they progress to close and critical analysis of texts alongside developing a love for reading through sharing stories they’ve enjoyed and recommending books to each other.

Phonic Knowledge in Reception

In Reception, our enabling environment, provides many opportunities for the children to apply their growing phonic knowledge to read. During self-directed time, this child has chosen to arrange magnetic letters to create CVC words which they sound out and blend. Practising decoding skills through play activities makes learning to read fun!

Prosody in Year 2

In Year 2, the children are taught to read with prosody as part of our Little Wandle reading programme. Prosodic reading or reading with expression improves children’s comprehension skills as they focus on punctuation cues and change their voice to react to characters, plot points or the setting. This strategy helps Year 2 children to build a more complete and accurate picture of what’s being conveyed on the page.

Retrieval and Inference Skills in Year 4

Year 4 worked hard to use their retrieval and inference skills to find out information about the main character in the text they were reading. They had to understand what was meant by metaphors within the text, for example, the class were able to explain that where it said ‘It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from going grey as her other surroundings’, it was referring to Dorothy still being happy, energetic and enjoying life rather than becoming ‘grey’.

Understanding Mood in Year 5

After reading an extract from the core text, ‘The Last Wild’ these Year 5 children used a ‘zones of relevance’ graphic to first discuss then visually sort a set of words to describe the mood created in the text. The words that were most relevant or described the mood best, were placed closest to the centre. This activity helped the children to deepen their understanding of vocabulary and provided a bank of words for articulating their ideas.