Literacy

Reading at Blackwood Primary School

At Blackwood Primary School we are deeply committed to teaching every child to read and experience the joy that reading brings, understanding that learning to read is an essential skill for success in school and beyond. Reading instruction at Blackwood Primary is based on current research into how children learn to read and the most effective teaching methods including the ‘Science of Reading’. The Science of Reading suggests that reading processes must be explicitly and systematically taught to ensure success for every child. Our literacy program teaches students the relationship between letters and sounds. We focus on supporting students to know how to decode and blend the sounds in words before they can understand the meaning of text.

Our reading program at Blackwood Primary School has adapted to reflect research around current best practice according to the Science of Reading in line with advice from the Department for Education. Going forwards, we will no longer be using levelled readers to support your child’s reading journey and instead children will develop their reading skills using decodable texts and books from our ‘Next Steps’ collection, including a range of genre texts and ‘good fit’ books.

Decodable Readers

Decodable texts are designed for beginning readers to practise segmenting and blending skills as they learn the English alphabetic code. Beginning readers need to practise reading by decoding words using the letter-sound correspondences they have been taught. As children become more aware of the sounds in words (phonemes) and the letters that represent those sounds (graphemes), they can connect those sounds and letters to words they know in spoken language. Eventually, those written words become instantly recognisable.

Decodable texts also include irregular high-frequency words such as ‘the’, ‘said’ and ‘because’. It is essential that students who are learning synthetic phonics also learn irregular high-frequency words to allow them to successfully practise their reading using decodable texts. It’s important that your child knows that these words are not always able to be sounded out using the common phonemes they have previously learnt.

Next Steps

Once your child can recognise most common letter sounds and can use their sound understanding to decode words with confidence, they transition beyond decodable books to begin reading books that incorporate a broader range of vocabulary and text structures. At Blackwood Primary School we refer to these as genre texts. These books may not always follow a strict phonetic pattern, but they are still appropriate for your child’s developmental stage. Our ‘Next Steps’ collection incorporates a range of different text types with varying levels of difficulty, categorised by reading genres. Our fiction texts are our ‘fun reads’, including short novels, book series and graphic novels. Our non-fiction texts are our ‘fact reads’ which are aligned to our Transdisciplinary Themes for inquiry, providing opportunities for students to select texts that connect with their learning in class. These books encourage comprehension, vocabulary building, fluency, and the development of skills like predicting, inferring, and connecting ideas.

We encourage children to select ‘good fit books’, to foster a love of reading. A ‘good fit book’ is a book that provides an appropriate level of reading challenge which is tailored to the individual’s interests.  Phonics remains essential through your child’s entire reading journey. Your child will continue developing their knowledge of sounds and word families, which will support their ability to decode more complex words and build fluency. At this stage of learning, your child’s reading assessments with their teacher will focus on reading fluency and comprehension, meaning they will no longer be moving through levels.

Supporting Your Child’s Reading Journey

In addition to focusing on skill-building, it is crucial to nurture your child’s love for reading. Research shows that children who regularly read for pleasure are more likely to develop stronger literacy skills. Help your child discover books that spark their curiosity and excitement. When children read for enjoyment, they gain fluency, improve comprehension, and expand their vocabulary in a natural and joyful way.

You can help your child develop their decoding skills by practising the following strategies together:

• Pointing to each sound in the word and having your child say them aloud

• Sliding your finger under a word and say the sounds slowly to blend the whole word together.
  For example:

/l/ /igh/ /t/ (light)

/b/ /oa/ /t/ (boat)

• Offer your child a prompt to self-correct e.g. “Try that again.”

• Praise their efforts and the strategies they used

You can help your child develop their reading fluency, accuracy and comprehension by:

• Echo reading – read small phrases and sentences and ask your child to read the sentence or phrase back.

• Choral reading – you and your child read together at the same time.

• Promoting a positive reading attitude – in the busy world of today, reading as a past time can sometimes get overlooked, bring back the love of reading

• Questioning – “What do you think this book is about?” “What do you think comes next?” “What do you remember about what you have read so far?”

• Encourage regular reading practice – just ten minutes reading every day is a great way to support progress with reading skills

It is important to share regular reading experiences with your child, no matter how old they are. Reading a range of texts such as books, graphic novels and magazines builds vocabulary, strengthens imagination, and helps children understand the world around them. When you read with your child, asking questions, sharing laughs, exploring stories together, you are not only supporting the development of reading skills, but you are also showing them that reading is meaningful and fun.

As Dr. Seuss says:

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”