At Ankermoor Academy, we aim to make everyone, children and adults a reader. We want all of our children to be fluent, confident readers. Reading underpins the whole of our curriculum and it is enthusiastically promoted throughout all subject areas. The children will be exposed to a wealth of stories, poems, rhymes and non-fiction to develop their vocabulary, language, comprehension and to develop a genuine love of reading and a keen interest in a variety fo texts. We aim for our children to have a real love of reading and to become lifelong readers. 

By the end of KS1, children will be fluent at decoding.

By the end of KS2, we aim for children to be able to: 

*read with confidence and fluency 

* have an interest in a wide range of reading materials and read for pleasure

*acquire a wide vocabulary 

*meet age related expectations for reading 

Early Reading at Ankermoor 

We teach early reading through the systematic, synthetic phonics programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. Our phonics sessions take place right from the start of Reception and this continues into Year 1 to ensure all children become fluent readers. 

We teach phonics for 30 minutes each day with additional daily oral blending practice taking place throughout the day. In Reception 4 new phonemes and their corresponding graphemes are taught (GPCs) each week. They are then used in the final lesson of the week to review the week's learning. Children will also learn tricky words during these sessions. 

In the Autumn and Spring term, Reception learn phase 2 and phase 3 GPCs and then phase 4 in the Summer term. 

Year 1 begin the Autumn term with 3 weeks of revision of phases 2, 3 and 4 before moving onto phase 5. Phase 5 will then be completed by the end of the year. 

Year 2 children will begin the year by revisiting phase 5 and other previously taught phases to ensure that all children are completely confident with applying these GPCs in both reading and writing. 

Reading Practice Sessions in KS1

Children in Reception, Year 1 and 2, read fully decodable books 3 times a week with an adult. Our books are all linked to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Big Cat books. These books are then sent home for children to develop their confidence and fluency and to showcase their reading skills to their parents/carers. Each reading session has a different focus; decoding, prosody and comprehension. Your child's book has been carefully matched to their current level of reading. Please remember to give them lots of praise and listen to them at least 3 times a week and record this in their diary. The aim of the practice book is to develop your childs fluency and confidence in reading. If they can't read a word, ask them to decode (sound it out) and blend it. Then talk about the book together. Each child will also bring home a book to share, this book is to help encourage your child to become a lifelong reader and for you to enjoy together. 

Reading Practice Sessions in KS2

Children across KS2 will read with an adult twice a week and will also have a whole class shared reading session. Each class will have a new class novel every half term and all of their reading sessions will be based on this. We want our children to become lifelong readers and therefore decided that we would invest in class novels for the children to read. Session 1 will focus on vocabulary and session 2 on comprehension, where the session will be based on a different reading foci.

Any child in KS2 that hasn't 'cracked the code' will follow the same reading practice structure as KS1.  

Children in KS2 will bring home a reading for pleasure book which they can read independently but can also share it with you. All of our library books have been lexiled which means that we can guide the children to the books that are at their age ad stage of development. 

We expect all children to read as often as they can at home and for this to be recorded in their reading diary. We celebrate the number of reads each child has and when the children hit the different milestones 25, 75, 100, 200 reads they will get a prize.