At Fiddlers Lane Primary School we strive to ensure that ‘every child is literate’ by the time they leave us. We aim to get all children high school ready and to equip them with the skills to access the world around them as members of society in modern Britain. All children have the right to high quality teaching and learning opportunities that help them develop these essential literacy skills, providing them with the opportunity to reach their potential whilst at school and after they leave. We place reading at the core of learning, and this is reflected through timetabling and the enjoyment created around reading based activities within our curriculum. Throughout the school week, our youngest children will engage in high quality phonics and begin to use phonetic approaches in reading, alongside a range of other reading strategies. As we progress through the year groups, children will engage in whole-class and independent reading activities which will develop their fluency skills and their comprehension skills. Reading feeds pupils’ imagination and can open a treasure-trove of wonder and joy for curious young minds. It is our aim that, by the end of their primary education, all pupils at Fiddlers Lane Primary School can read fluently, with confidence and be able to use these skills in the wider curriculum and beyond.

Early Reading vision statement:

 “At Fiddlers Lane Community Primary School, we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One and believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with opportunities for children to listen to a range of books read by an adult to promote fluency and language comprehension through a whole language approach that ensures a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.

‘Phonics provides pupils with the building blocks they need to read fluently and confidently, as well as aiding future learning and giving them the tools they need to express themselves.’ (Nick Gibb, Schools Standards Minister 2018)

Intent

‘The ability to read is the key to educational achievement. Without a basic foundation in literacy, children cannot gain access to a rich and diverse curriculum. Poor literacy limits opportunities not only at school, but throughout life, both economically and in terms of a wider enjoyment and appreciation of the written word’. (Education and Skills Committee)

Therefore, in Fiddlers Lane we belief that all children should get the best teaching possible in this crucial area so we will deliver the important skills and knowledge of phonics through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a whole language approach which will ensure all children achieve and succeed to their highest potential.

 Fiddlers Lane Primary School aims to reinforce a consistent, high quality approach to the teaching of phonics across the Early Years Foundation Stage, (EYFS,) Key Stage One and on into Key Stage Two for children who still need this further support.

 Our main aims are:

• To teach children aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme to aid reading, writing and spelling development.
• To encourage the use of segmenting and blending so that decoding skills provide a sound foundation for reading, writing and spelling.
• To ensure the teaching of phonics is lively, interactive and investigative.
• To enable children to use phonic awareness across the curriculum.
• To ensure that children know the 44 phonemes within the English language.
• To teach children to recognise the graphemes within words and associate them with the appropriate phoneme when reading.
• To provide children with strategies to identify and decode ‘tricky words.’