Intent

At Magdalen Court School we aim to provide a safe, positive learning environment where our learners feel they belong, can believe in themselves, developing confidence and resilience as learners. We support them to achieve the desired outcomes to be successful in their next steps on the path to the world of work and independence, well-prepared for life and adulthood, who are keen to make a difference to the world they live in.

We believe that reading is an essential life skill, and we are committed to enabling our children to become lifelong readers.

 At the heart of our strategy is our drive to foster a love of reading, enriching children’s learning through carefully designed teaching activities that utilise fiction and non-fiction including thought-provoking texts.

 Reading is a skill that enables children to develop their learning across the wider curriculum and lays the foundations for success in future learning and employment. We recognise the importance of taking a consistent whole school approach to the teaching of reading in order to ensure our children are fluent readers with well-developed comprehension skills.

Implementation

Phonics

At Magdalen Court School we teach early reading using synthetic phonics as the main approach. Pupils are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend sounds for reading and how to segment the sounds in order to write words. They are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading alongside high frequency words which don’t completely follow phonic rules.

We use the Read Write Inc phonics programme which has been developed by Ruth Miskin and is taught in over 5,000 schools in the UK.  This programme teaches all of the the common sounds in the English language. The children learn to recognise the sounds and then blend them into words for reading. 

We use Fresh Start for those pupils who need support phonics teaching with interest at a higher level than Read Write Inc.

Once children have completed the Read Write Inc or Fresh Start ,they review their phonic knowledge as part of the RWInc spelling programme and the ‘dot and dash’ activities.

Reading Comprehension

Reading Fluency

Reading Curriculum

Reading for Pleasure

Impact