Read Achieve Succeed
At The Harmony Trust we believe that the key to succeeding in later life to develop confident communicators who are skilled in Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. Language and vocabulary are essential for success at all stages of our lives.? This is particularly important for the significant proportion of EAL learners in our trust. However, purposeful vocabulary acquisition, applied across a range of contexts, is?necessary skill for all: ‘Being in a word-poor context at a young age can have far-reaching negative consequences for our children. A restricted vocabulary as a young child goes on to correlate with factors in later life such as employment, pay and even health and well-being as an adult.’?Therefore?every lesson is and will be a language lesson across the whole curriculum.?? ?
Reading?is our highest priority. Attainment in reading is a key indicator for success in other curriculum areas and associated with positive child and adult outcomes, particularly for children identified as disadvantaged. Every member of staff should promote and model reading as a lifelong skill for learning and engender a culture of reading for pleasure. Through the Read Achieve Succeed Strategy, we will enable teachers to become expert in the teaching of reading and children to develop as confident, skilled and fluent readers who read for both pleasure and purpose.??? ?
Our primary method for learning to read is phonics. ?
Why Phonics Matters
Making sure that children become engaged with reading from the very beginning is one of the most important ways to make a difference to their life chances whatever their socio-economic background. A secure phonetic knowledge enables children to become confident from the earliest age. Those who love to read and show confidence in reading read more and therefore practise and apply their skills more often. Evidence shows that teaching phonics is the best way to teach children to read. 'Synthetic Programmes were especially effective for younger, at-risk readers.' Phonics give the youngest of readers the skills to decode and experience success in reading texts. ?
Skilled reading begins in the Early Years Foundation Stage with quality talk and vocabulary development. Where reading provision is at its strongest skilled teachers spend time discussing books and stories and engaging children at all ages in purposeful talk. They also take every opportunity to discuss letters and the sounds that they make, enabling children to tune into sounds and develop phonological awareness. They improve talk and interactions by explicitly teaching new vocabulary across the wide range of curriculum areas, making explicit links and modelling sentence structures.?
The Harmony Trust Phonics Scheme of Work maps out the teaching of phonics from the time every child starts school.? The aim is to ensure that all children learn to read with confidence and fluency at the earliest stages.
To view the full guidance document click on the document below.
To view our guide for parents please click on the document below.