01/11/2019

The children have been really calm and settled this week. They have been working hard in all lessons.

We have started learning about Market Harborough in our topic lessons. We will be finding out about where our town is, what buildings we have and what we use them for, the name of the river and our biggest park. We will also start learning about the history of our market next week.

In English, we will start a two week unit of work linked to the amazing picture book, 'Journey'. In Maths, we will be learning about numbers to 20 so it would be great if you could encourage your child to practise writing the teen numbers.

Many thanks to those of you who attended our workshops related to KS1 English and Maths. The power points will be available to you in due course. In the meantime, we would like to give you an overview of our reading provision in Year1. We have designed a bespoke schedule of teaching and learning approaches based on our experience and recent research.

• Phonics: All children have a whole class phonics lesson each morning where we follow the Sounds Write Phonics Programme. More information is available at: https://www.sounds-write.co.uk/page-84-downloads-links-for-parents-teachers.aspx This phonics lesson addresses the fundamentals of decoding the English code in order that children can sound out letters in words and develop the crucial skills of segmenting and blending needed for reading and spelling. As part of these lessons, we do echo reading to develop fluency and understanding.

• Independent Daily Reading and Guided Reading: In addition to these lessons, the children read daily after lunch from a selection of books that are from their relevant book bands. These lessons encourage the children to build up stamina for independent reading. We have a focus based on one of our comprehension skills e.g. retrieval, prediction or inference. During this time, the teacher may be reading with a small guided group or assessing individual reading. Some children have a twice weekly additional small group reading session-these take place on a Tuesday morning and a Friday afternoon.

• Reading to the Children: We read a wide selection of books to the children. They are read to at least daily. Research shows how important this is right through the primary phase and beyond. Children can assess high quality literature and are exposed to vocabulary that they might come across in daily encounters.

• The Reading Spine: Each year group has a reading spine of books that are central to our curriculum. Many of these form the basis of our English units of work. They are often used as a stepping stone to written work.
• Reading Volunteers: We are very lucky to have some parent volunteers who come in weekly to listen to some children read one to one. These are usually children who just need a little extra practise.

• Home Reading: Daily home reading is crucially important and, in our experience, this has a significant positive impact on reading attainment at the end of Year 1 and beyond. It is the time for the children to apply their skills and share their books with you. It is no way intended to replace a story time as sharing a book with your child is the most wonderful thing to do. It does not need to be a long session and it needs to be done at a time when your child is not over-tired. We are very happy to discuss with you what techniques work well e.g. 'say the sounds and read the word', using picture clues to gain meaning, discussing simple predictions, taking it turns to read a page each. Thank you so much to those of you who are putting your child's reading book in their hands in the morning. It is helping to make the changing of books routine run a little more smoothly.

We hope that this clarifies our reading approach. The teaching of reading is a complicated process and requires a range of approaches. We are very proud of our reading results and feel that we have devised provision to enable children to make excellent progress across the year. You are very welcome to come and discuss this with us further.