Northill's Approach to Reading Curriculum

Phonics

At Northill CE Academy, we follow a Supersonic phonic friends scheme. A strong knowledge of phonics supports both a child's reading and writing. We believe that by giving children a solid foundational phonics knowledge using a common language and approach across the school will give our children the best possible start in their reading journey. The books provided for our children are engaging and feature a variety of interesting vocabulary. 

Supersonic Phonic Friends is a scheme that teaches children the sounds in English, the letters that represent them, and how to form the letters when writing. The scheme includes reading books written using only the letters they have learnt at each level (and a small number of separately taught tricky words). The children will quickly feel confident and successful. 

Tricky words

In some English words, the spelling of the word doesn’t appear to fit with the phonemes that children have been taught so far. These words are taught as whole words rather than as a combination of sounds.

Tricky words include the, go, said, my, he.

Phonics is taught explicitly in Mercury class and to the year 1 children but the skills are used and encouraged throughout the whole school. 

Guided Reading

In years 2 to 6, the children take part in guided reading sessions at the beginning of each day. We are using 'Comprehension Ninja' to provide our learners with a range of texts across different genres to encourage the children in their reading skills. 

Reading Skills

• Reading comprehension: Making sure students understand what they read. 
• Fluency: Reading at speed, demonstrating word recognition and speedy decoding of unknown words. 
• Vocabulary: Improving children's vocabulary through varied texts. 
• Critical thinking: Analysing texts and considering different view points. 
• Predictions: Children using what they have read already to predict what could happen in the story based on evidence. 
• Questioning: Children trying to get a better understanding of a text by asking questions. 
• Retrieval: Children find information in a text for different purposes. 

During guided reading, the children will read a text in a group with an adult taking part in discussion before working independently through a set of questions.