Reading
Hello! We are the reading coordinators at Sherdley.
Mrs Roberts looks after Little Wandle Early Reading, covering Pre-school, Reception and Key Stage 1.
Mrs Orbison is our English Co-ordinator and has overview of all the other aspects of Reading.
Early Reading
My name is Mrs Roberts and I am one of the Reception Teachers in our Early Years Team. I an an experienced teacher, and have taught at Sherdley since 2004. Over the last 18 years I have taught all of the year groups in Early Years and Key Stage 1. I have been the Early Reading Lead 2019, having previously worked in the Science Team, covered the Senco role and coordinated RE. I work closely with our Phonics lead Mrs Baxter, and our Enlgish coordinator Mrs Orbison.
At Sherdley, we value reading as a crucial life skill. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose. We believe that all our children can become fluent readers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching the phonics programme in Pre-school and follow their progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read as they move through school.
In Pre-school the children share high-quality stories and poems and learn a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes. Their listening and attention skills are developed through focussed activities including oral blending. We ensure that our Pre-school children are ready for more formal reading activities when they start school.
In Reception, the children start their phonics sessions after the introductory 2 weeks. We build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to 30 minutes lessons as quickly as possible. Daily lessons continue in Year 1, and for any children who have not acheived the standard in the Phonics Screening Check, in Year 2.
We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week, using our beautiful Little Wandle books. These decodable reading practice books are taken home at the end of the week to ensure success is shared with the family. Children from Pre-school up also take a reading for pleasure book home each week, for parents to share and read to children. In Year 2 we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with phonics, whilst children who have passed the Phonics Screening Check are moved onto our levelled Reading Scheme books as appropriate.