At Orchard Manor School we are passionate about ensuring every child develops a love of reading and early reading is taught using synthetic phonics as the main approach to early reading skills.

Phonics

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 with the help of Biff, Kipper, Chip and Floppy the dog.  The children learn to recognise the sounds and then blend them into words for reading. 

If you would like more information about phonics teaching in our school please click on the Oxford Owl logo. The site has a lot of resources that you can use at home with your children, including access to free e-books which you can read with your child on their website.  There are also useful videos to see how we teach phonics in school.

Reading Scheme

We use a variety of reading schemes. Our books are colour banded to ensure our young people choose appropriate reading books that they can decode and understand. Sometimes pupils can read many words but still need to develop their comprehension skills so it may appear they can read a book, but are focussed on their understanding of language.

We cover all different genres of books including scheme and real books, fiction and non-fiction.

Alongside our reading books we use Accelerated Reader where pupils can access a quiz to check their understanding once they have read a book. Quizzes are available for scheme and real books and are banded to ensure learners choose books appropriate to their comprehension skills.  If you would like to have a look at an example of the quizzes please click here.

Our libraries have also been developed to provide spaces where children can choose books as well as work in groups to listen to stories or share books together.