At Emmaus, we want to instil a love of reading within our school community. We promote a love of reading through story time, shared reading, high-quality class libraries and reading-rich learning environments. We recognise that reading is the key that unlocks the rest of our curriculum, so place a central importance on children’s mastery of this area. We separate reading into learning to decode (the teaching of phonics) and learning to comprehend (Inference lessons). Children start on a phonics and progress onto 'inference' lessons once they have developed sufficient phonological understanding.
Reading for Pleasure
We want children to enjoy reading, as well as be proficient at the underlying skills. We recognise that children who read for enjoyment routinely are also more likely to be more successful in later life. We want our children to be excited by the opportunities that reading brings: to go on adventures, discover new places, empathise with different lives and learn new facts. Reading can bring all this and more.
Our comprehension sessions are based on ‘Inference Training’, a comprehension intervention that emphasises boosting vocabulary, activating background knowledge, making inferences, integrating and building meaning and promoting the enjoyment of reading (Whatmuff 2014). This has been adapted from the work of Yuill and Oakhill (1988).
Our Concepts and Content Organiser shows what comprehension skills are taught at each stage of children's development and links these to specific shared texts. Our Pedagogy document outlines how we teach phonics and reading comprehension and some of the research that informs our teaching. Our Reading for Pleasure Pedagogy shows how we promote reading and how our actions are research-informed. The Phonics Progression Map shows how children move through each of the 'Read, Write Inc.' groups and indicates which group of sounds are taught. There is further information about the order of sounds taught available from this parent guide.
Parent View