There are several ways that we enable reading at Sunnyside, ensuring that books are fully decodable for the child up to the level of phonics they are working at.

In school, we read and write in our phonics lessons every day, with opportunities to read sentences using decoding and recognition of tricky words.

 

Each week our phonics learning ends with a minibook directly focused on the phoneme (sound) we are learning that week. These are printed double sided A4 sheets that can be cut in half and folded to make a minibook.

We all join in guided reading groups with our friends in school each week, and we love to read our Rhino Reader books and answer the comprehension questions at the end of each book.

The fantastic thing about Rhino Readers, is that they are all available online, so each week, parents are sent a code for 'Twinkl Go' - this is a free platform for us to share phonics resources and the Rhino reader books we have been reading in school - we know that the more children read a book, the more fluent they become - this is a fantastic way to read even more at home in a fun way.

Here is a webinar giving you further information about how to support your child with Rhino Readers.

 

Each child brings their own 'Decodable Reader' reading book home each week to support reading at home. These books are closely matched to each child's phonics ability and start from level 2a, 2b, 2c right through to Level 6a, 6b and 6c. When children first bring their book home, we would typically expect them to know the tricky words and know all the phonemes in the book, allowing them to sound out and blend the phonemes to make words. We encourage children to read the same book again and again (5 times per week at home) because we know that the more they read the book, the more their fluency to read whole sentences with meaning will develop.

Children in Year 1 and 2 also have weekly spellings to learn, these spellings are learnt throughout the week in the phonics lessons using the phonemes or spelling rules that they are learning - they are then tested on these spellings the following week.

 

Children in Year 2 who are reaching the end of the decodable reader scheme (Level 6c) and are fluent readers, will be ready to move onto our Accelerated reader scheme - this is the reading scheme that children continue on their reading journey with.

You can find our more about Accelerated Reader here.