Reading at Clyst Heath

The Importance of Talk, Early phonics and Reading at Clyst Heath

The Importance of Talk

From our nursery we prioritize the importance of talk to develop a child’s vocabulary acquisition and cognitive development. For example, by talking of fire pupils would learn and connect words such as blaze, flames, heat, smoke, plumes and extinguish. This supports later reading by helping children comprehend texts when they see such words. We also encourage partner talk and all adults model speaking and listening throughout the day.

Systematic Phonics instruction 

At Clyst Heath we use the DFE approved systematic phonics programme, Little Wandle. Decodable books allow children to practise and memorise their learning from phonics lessons to build accuracy, fluency and confidence with their phonics knowledge

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

The Little Wandle phonics programme supports children with special educational needs, where teachers are able to adapt their pace of instruction based around their understanding of a child’s unique needs and profile.

Developing a Reading Culture and Reading Instruction

We actively promote reading for pleasure across the whole school as it is associated with high levels of literacy achievement but also developing emotional personal development for empathy, understanding of self.

As children have mastered decoding and can read, we teach the comprehension aspect of reading, such as decoding, fluency and prosody are taught using the acronym, VIPERS: Vocabulary; Inference; Prediction; Explanation; Retrieval; Sequence or summarise. This method ensures that a wide range of reading questions are used to develop the reader. Click links below to read more. Carefully selected reading books are matched appropriately to each child, using our adopted system of Accelerated Reader.