Reading and Phonics Information

At St. Joseph's School we use a wide range of reading books, both progressive schemes and 'real' books to teach and support reading.

In The Early Years Foundation Stage:
Children choose books to take home to share with parents to develop pre-reading skills , particularly focussing on discussion and understanding using pictures. They also follow the Jolly Phonics scheme to introduce them to phonics. They then progress to: Collins Big Cat reading scheme which is phonics based.

In Key Stage 1:
Children either continue to follow a reading scheme such as:
Sunshine starters, Pirate readers or Oxford reading tree, or they start to choose books from the colour coded boxes which include a range of schemes, namely:
Walker Books
Oxford Literacy Web
Oxford Reading Tree
Rigby Star
Ginn 
Lighthouse
Heinemann Story world
Nelson Spiral Starters 
Pelican Readers 

In Key Stage 2 
The children continue though the colour bands if needed or go onto 'free readers' which are longer, more complex books.
Some of these are from schemes named above, others are chosen by author and non fiction subject . 

Children who need extra reading support use the following support schemes :
Rapid Readers 
Brainwaves
Rising Stars
Wellington Square
Fuzz Buzz
Oxford Trackers

Phonics: 
The Letters and Sounds compulsory phonics programme is taught from The Early Years Foundation Stage through to Key Stage 1 and into Key Stage 2 where necessary .
The children are taken through 6 phases wherein they learn to identify sounds and use them to segment and blend words for writing and reading , as well as learning high frequency words.