Reading

At St Nicholas we believe that your child’s reading experience is much more than working out what the words say. We want children to take pleasure in reading and to develop their understanding alongside their ability to decode. By reading at home parents can make a big difference to their child’s reading success. A short daily reading session at home can make all the difference to children’s progress and will help them on their journey to become an enthusiastic reader. Our home reading books come from a variety of schemes which are matched to our phonics scheme of learning to ensure they match what your child is learning. They include Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Phonics Bug and Collins Big Cat Books as well as making use of 'free reader' texts as the children move beyond phonics.

At school we primarily use phonics to teach children to work our new words – this is called decoding. We undertake phonics teaching where we link letters to sounds, shared reading where we model good reading skills and involve the children in thinking about what makes a good reader and we also use guided reading to target children’s next steps in their journey to become a successful reader. In addition we listen to children read, this may be in a small group or 1 to 1 and we also share stories to develop reading for pleasure, language development and to help children experience different types of texts.

Please see out Reading News - Helping at Home document for ideas to support your child with their reading.