At The Rushmere Park Academy we introduce Phonics to children in Nursery, however in Reception children will experience our Phonics programme a method of learning to read words. Children learn to read letters by saying the sounds they represent. They can then start to read words by blending individual sounds together to make words.

Alongside learning to decode the words on the page, your child will also learn comprehension skills. This helps them to make sense of what the words say and what the text means. Together, these skills will help your child on their way to becoming a keen and confident reader.

Children will learn:

• Linking sounds and letters
• Blending sounds to make words
• Learning tricky words

In Year 1, children will have a growing knowledge of phonics and will be building up a range of reading skills. The focus is now on developing their phonics and comprehension skills as they become confident and fluent readers.

In June, your child will take the phonics screening check to make sure they are reading at the expected level. Children are encouraged to utilise their knowledge of blending and segmenting within activities throughout the day.

Children will learn:

• Use phonics skills to decode words
• Blend sounds in words
• Read common exception words (tricky words)
• Read words that have different endings
• Read words with contractions
• Read books at the right level out loud
• Re-read books to build up fluency and confidence in word reading
• Listen to and talk about a range of stories and texts
• Learn well-known stories, fairy stories, and traditional tales
• Understand the books they read and listen to
• Common reading issues

In Year 2, children will be building up a range of reading skills. They should have strong phonics knowledge and growing comprehension skills, which will help them read more broadly, confidently, and fluently.

In May, your child will take their Key Stage 1 SATs. The tests include maths and English sections, as well as two reading papers.

Children will learn:

• Use phonics to decode complex words
• In Year 2, your child will still be learning to read increasingly complex words using phonics.
• Phonics focuses on building words from sounds. A sound might be represented by a letter (such as ‘s’ or ‘m’) or a group of letters (like ‘ch’ or ‘igh’). Your child will learn the letters and the sounds they make, and how to put them together to read words.
• Your child will continue developing their word-reading in Year 2 until they are fluent word readers. Once they have learned all the sound and letter combinations, they will be able to try to read any unfamiliar words.
• Blend and recognise alternative sounds for graphemes
• In Year 2, your child will continue to learn which sounds the different letters represent. They can then read the separate letters in a word and put them together to read the whole word. This is called blending. So, if your child knows ‘f’, ‘r’ ‘o’ and ‘g’, they can blend them together to read frog.
• Your child will often come across words that have two possible ways of saying the word (for example, ‘lead’). This is because there are alternative sounds for the letters – the same letters can be pronounced in different ways. In this example, ‘ea’ could be pronounced /e/ or /ee/. This means that your child will have to think about the word in the sentence and make a choice: ‘the girl took the lead in the race’ or ‘the roof was covered in lead’.
• Read words that use common suffixes
• Suffixes are letters and groups of letters that appear at the end of words and change the meaning of the word, like -s, -ing, and -ed.
• In Year 2, your child will be taught to read words that they can decode already, but have an ending added. For example, adding ‘-ness’ to ‘sad’ to make ‘sadness’. Other examples of words with suffixes that your child might learn to read include ‘enjoyment’, ‘plentiful’ and ‘happily’.
• Read more common exception words (tricky words)
• Some words are trickier to sound out than others. This is usually because the sounds and letters do not match with what has been taught so far, or they are not spelt in a way that can be figured out using phonics. In other words, they are not decodable. The National Curriculum calls these ‘common exception words’, but they are often called tricky words in schools.
• Your child is likely to meet words like these (for example, ‘said’ and ‘the’) in the books they read. Children are often taught to recognise these words by sight.
• Read most words quickly and accurately
• By Year 2, your child will have had lots of practice with reading. This will mean that most children will not need to sound out and blend the sounds in most words. Instead, they will read the word quickly because they have come across it many times.
• Of course, there will still be unfamiliar words that still need to be decoded carefully. These include less-common words, names, and words that children are reading for the first time.
• Read some books out loud
• In Year 2, your child should have a good knowledge of how phonics works. Together with tricky words they can recognise on sight, this means that they will be able to read books at the right level independently, sounding out unfamiliar words with confidence.
• Your child will also have the chance to listen to lots of other books that they can’t read on their own yet, building their understanding and enjoyment.
• Re-read books to build up fluency and confidence
• Re-reading books is one of the best ways for children to become fluent readers. The National Curriculum encourages children to re-read books, helping them to become more confident in their word reading every time they revisit a text.
• Listen to and talk about a range of texts

Many children in Year 2 are well on the way to becoming fluent readers. They are often able to understand texts that are more complicated than those that they can read themselves.

For this reason, many of the books that teachers use for comprehension will be books that are read aloud to them. Reading for comprehension in Year 2 will involve plenty of chances for your child to:

• Discuss the sequence of events in books and how information is linked
• Learn about and retell a wider range of stories, fairy stories, and traditional tales
• Be introduced to non-fiction books that are structured in different ways
• Recognise the language used in stories and poetry
• Discuss the meaning of words.
• Learn some poems by heart and recite them with expression.

Understand the books they read and listen to Understand the books they read and listen to

In Year 2, your child will develop their comprehension by:

• Drawing on what they already know or using information provided by their teacher
• Checking that the text makes sense to them as they read and correcting inaccurate reading
• Talking about events in stories and why stories have the titles they do
• Making connections based on what is said and done in a story
• Predicting what might happen next in a story based on what has been read so far.

Talk about books and poems

• Reading lessons in Year 2 give your child the chance to talk about the books that they read and that are read to them. In these discussions, children show their understanding and learn that different people have different opinions about the things that they read.
• Your child might talk about books as part of a small group or with the whole class. As well as helping them understand their books better, these sessions also give them practice taking turns and listening to what other people think.

Year 2 reading test

• In Year 2, your child’s reading will be assessed by a national assessment task (commonly called SATs), as well as by the teacher against a set of criteria from the National Curriculum.
• Year 2 reading test
• The reading test may include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Children answer comprehension questions to show their understanding of the texts.
• There will be a mixture of question types. In some, your child will need to choose an answer (selected responses). For others, they will need to write their own answer (short and extended responses).
• Teacher assessment
• Over the course of the year, teachers will use the reading that children do in school to inform their teacher assessment. Teachers will assess your child’s word reading and their comprehension.

Common reading issues

Lots of parents worry about their children’s reading. Fortunately, help is at hand! Some children can read the words quite well – it’s just that they don’t want to. We call this group of children reluctant readers. For some other children, it is difficult to remember common words or the sounds of the letters from one day to the next. Reading is a slow and painful struggle, distressing for your child and for you. These children can be called struggling readers.

In Year 3, children will hopefully be on the way to becoming a confident, independent reader. Many children who have got to grips with phonics and word-reading will shift their focus onto comprehension.

• Understand root words, prefixes, and suffixes
• Root word is a word that can stand on its own without prefixes or suffixes.
• A prefix is a group of letters that is added to the beginning of a word. This makes a new word. For example, the prefix un- changes words, so they mean the opposite. For example, ‘happy’ becomes ‘unhappy’. In this example, ‘happy’ is the ‘root word’.
• A suffix is a group of letters that is added to the end of a word. For example, the suffix –ness turns a word into a noun. For example, ‘happy’ becomes ‘happiness’.
• Your child will use their knowledge of root words, prefixes, and suffixes to work out the meaning of words. They will understand how prefixes and suffixes can change meaning.
• Read more common exception words (tricky words)
• Some words are trickier to sound out than others. This is usually because the sounds and letters do not match with what has been taught so far, or they are not spelt in a way that can be figured out using phonics. In other words, they are not decodable. The National Curriculum calls these ‘common exception words’, but they are often called tricky words in schools.
• Your child is likely to meet words like these (for example, ‘said’ and ‘the’) in the books they read. Children are often taught to recognise these words by sight.
• Read a wide range of books and retell stories orally
• In Year 3, your child will read and listen to many different books including fairy tales, myths, and legends. Retelling these stories helps your child to learn story language and to practise speaking to an audience. We offer every child online access to ebooks which form an essential part of our reading programme, corresponding to individual children’s phonetical understanding and development.
• Perform poems and play scripts
• Your child will study poems or play scripts in Year 3, and will have the chance to perform them to an audience. This helps them learn to read aloud with expression and shows the teacher that they understand the text.
• Your child will also be expected to read aloud from their reading books.
• Talk about interesting words and phrases
• Your child will talk about the language used in the different books they read. They will explore why the author has chosen certain words and to think about why particular words and phrases work well. This is useful for building their understanding of the texts they read. It is also useful when they come to write themselves.
• Check that the text makes sense to them
• In Year 3, your child will be encouraged to become an independent reader, checking whether what they are reading makes sense to them. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s important they don’t just read on to try and finish the book.
• They will be taught to re-read and to think about or look up the meaning of a word. Your child will also be encouraged to use the other words and phrases to work out the meaning. They will be able to talk to you about their understanding of what they are reading.
• Read between the lines and justify thinking with evidence from the text
• Sometimes the information in a text is very clear (for example, ‘It was raining’) and easy to be understood. However, texts are often a bit more complicated and may require inference to properly understand.
• Inference is where some information is left for the reader to read between the lines. They need to make sense of details that are not stated clearly. For example:
• Instead of ‘It was raining’, the text might say, ‘Ally shook the water from her umbrella and carefully balanced her soaking coat on the radiator’.
• Being able to make inferences is a key skill for comprehension so this is a focus for reading in Year 3.
• Predict what might happen next
• In Year 3, your child will be taught to make predictions about the texts they read. This could mean predicting what will happen next in the story or what a character might say or do. These predictions are a good way to check understanding.
• Talk about books and poems
• Reading lessons in Year 3 give your child a chance to talk about the books that they read and that are read to them. In these discussions, children show their understanding and learn that different people have different opinions about the things that they read.
• Your child might talk about books as part of a small group or with the whole class. As well as developing their comprehension skills, these lessons are useful practise for taking turns and listening to what others say.
• Use dictionaries to check the meaning of words
• In Year 3, your child will learn to use dictionaries to check the meaning of words they have read.

In Year 4, children will be developing into an increasingly fluent reader. The focus will now be on building comprehension, but it is still important that children use their phonics skills to tackle new words.

Children will learn:

• Understand root words, prefixes, and suffixes
• Root word is a word that can stand on its own without prefixes or suffixes.
• A prefix is a group of letters that is added to the beginning of a word. This makes a new word. For example, the prefix un- changes words, so they mean the opposite. For example, ‘happy’ becomes ‘unhappy’. In this example, ‘happy’ is the ‘root word’.
• A suffix is a group of letters that is added to the end of a word. For example, the suffix –ness turns a word into a noun. For example, ‘happy’ becomes ‘happiness’.
• Your child will use their knowledge of root words, prefixes, and suffixes to work out the meaning of words. They will understand how prefixes and suffixes can change meaning.
• Read more common exception words (tricky words)
• Some words are trickier to sound out than others. This is usually because the sounds and letters do not match with what has been taught so far, or they are not spelt in a way that can be figured out using phonics. In other words, they are not decodable. The National Curriculum calls these ‘common exception words’, but they are often called tricky words in schools.
• Your child is likely to meet words like these (for example, ‘said’ and ‘the’) in the books they read. Children are often taught to recognise these words by sight. Some schools send home lists of tricky words so that children can learn them off by heart.
• Read a wide range of books and retell stories orally
• In Year 4, your child will read and listen to many different books including fairy tales, myths, and legends. Retelling these stories helps your child to learn story language and to practise speaking to an audience.
• You can find lots of books to read aloud with your child on our Rising Stars online reading scheme
• Perform poems and play scripts
• Your child will study poems or play scripts in Year 4 and will have the chance to perform them to an audience. This helps them learn to read aloud with expression and shows the teacher that they understand the text.
• Your child will also be expected to read aloud from their reading books.
• Talk about interesting words and phrases
• Your child will talk about the language used in the different books they read. They will explore why the author has chosen certain words and to think about why particular words and phrases work well. This is useful for building their understanding of the texts they read. It is also useful when they come to write themselves.
• Check that the text makes sense to them
• In Year 4, your child will be encouraged to become an independent reader, checking whether what they are reading makes sense to them. If it doesn’t make sense, it’s important they don’t just read on to try and finish the book.
• They will be taught to re-read and to think about or look up the meaning of a word. Your child will also be encouraged to use the other words and phrases to work out the meaning. They will be able to talk to you about their understanding of what they are reading.
• Read between the lines and justify thinking with evidence from the text
• Sometimes the information in a text is very clear (for example, ‘It was raining’) and easy to understand. However, texts are often a bit more complicated and may require inference to properly understand.
• Inference is where some information is left for the reader to read between the lines. They need to make sense of details that are not stated clearly. For example:
• Instead of ‘It was raining’, the text might say, ‘Ally shook the water from her umbrella and carefully balanced her soaking coat on the radiator’.
• Predict what might happen next
• In Year 4, your child will be taught to make predictions about the texts they read. This could mean predicting what will happen next in the story or what a character might say or do. These predictions are a good way to check understanding.
• Talk about books and poems
• Reading lessons in Year 4 give your child a chance to talk about the books that they read and that are read to them. In these discussions, children show their understanding and learn that different people have different opinions about the things that they read.
• ·our child might talk about books as part of a small group or with the whole class. As well as developing their comprehension skills, these lessons are useful practise for taking turns and listening to what others say.
• Use dictionaries to check the meaning of words
• In Year 4, your child will learn to use dictionaries to check the meaning of words they have read.