BOOK WEEK!
Reading
OUR INTENT for the Reading curriculum at St Joseph's is that:
every child is a reader- every child at St Joseph’s loves to read for pleasure and uses reading confidently as a tool to improve their knowledge.
Learning to read is a fundamental skill that all children need. St. Joseph’s has a long standing well developed procedure for teaching children to read. It has developed over a number of years with each refinement added to enable pupils to achieve. Reading is a strength of the school with a focus on Phonics. At St Joseph’s, we use a variety of strategies to help children to develop fluent word recognition, comprehension and a love of reading.
Phonics is taught daily to children from EYFS (for more information on the teaching of early reading, please click here) throughout KS1 and three times per week in Year 3. The children learn:
- aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme awareness in order to encourage good spelling.
- repetition and consolidation, so that spelling becomes automatic.
- to segment and blend.
- to read and write all 44 phonemes in the English language.
- specific strategies to help them remember common exception words.
- in a variety of ways that is lively, interactive and investigative.
- to apply their phonic skills in all curriculum areas.
Please click HERE to see our Phonics Overview.
Please click HERE to view a video that explains our approach to teaching Phonics.
Please see HERE to see our Anima Phonics Parent Survey Results July 2023.
Please see HERE for the Success Story Page on the Anima Phonics Website.
Teachers in Key Stage 1 and 2 build on the strong reading skills developed through the synthetic phonic approach and follow a progressive reading scheme to systematically develop children’s reading experience. School regularly sends home reading books, and parents are kept fully informed of progress in a reading record book which goes home daily and provides a valuable link between home and school.
We have a whole school phonics champion (Mrs Nash)
We have two whole school reading champions (Mr Kelly and Ms Lally)
To promote a love of reading culture throughout the school, teachers:
- select a variety of genres of books to read to the class for for pleasure and enjoyment; children have ‘Storytime’ every day. Storytime is treated as an exciting ‘time out’ of the busy school day when everyone can come together and be entertained by the ‘written word’.
- have received training in expressive and engaging reading techniques.
- encourage children to share their favourite books from home for ‘Show and Tell’ and give a brief summary of the plot – without giving too much away!
- regularly take the children to the library to choose their own books to read in addition to the school reading scheme. The library is also open before and after-school for parents to visit with their child to select books to read together at home. In Year 6, children are also given the opportunity to become librarians.
- provide children with enrichment events such as 'The Masked Reader' and ‘World Book Day’ and ‘Book Week’
Supporting with Phonics
Please see the video to help you know the phonics sounds. This will enable you to support your child at home.
Please see HERE for a phonics presentation relevant to your child's year group (Early Years, Year 1 and Year 2).
What parents can do to help with their child’s reading at home?
We encourage all parents to read with their child every day and to make time to discuss the story, characters, setting and ask children questions about what they have read. We ask parents to write a comment and sign their child’s reading record daily as a way of sharing their child’s reading journey at home. Any concerns about their child’s reading or how they could help them, can be noted in their Reading Record book, or they could speak to the class teacher.
Please click here to view your child’s reading record.
Reading Champions
We love reading!
We are very lucky to have staff who are very passionate about reading. Two very special teachers are Mr Kelly (KS2 Reading Champion) and Ms Lally (KS1 Reading Champion). These are our Reading Champions and they are working hard to make reading as enjoyable as it can be.
Want to know more...See our 'In It To Win It' below!
How to be a Reading Champion?
You too can become a Reading Champion.
Simply pick up a book and read. Read to yourself, a parent, a grandparent, a sibling or even your pet.
Remember to ask your adult to write it in your reading diary. Lots of practise means you could get a Headteacher Award for reading and if you do, you becomea Reading Champion and get a badge to wear with pride.
Now read, read, read!
Christmas Reading Challenge
Hi all,
Ms Lally and Mr Kelly here, setting a new, fun reading challenge for the Christmas holidays. We have heard that many of you have some cheeky elves in your homes and we have also spotted some in different places out about doing work for Santa.
The challenge is to read a story to an elf (cheeky or helpful) and write a book review about the story. Alternatively, you can share a Christmas book with your family and write your review about that.
Book reviews will be sent out with you in the next couple of days. Please feel free to ask your parents to help you complete these. As always, we would love to see some pictures so please send them to rec@st-josephs.hants.sch.uk.
We hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year.
Santa and his Elves love a good book!
Reading Competition 2023 - IN IT TO WIN IT!
In It To Win It Task
On the 9th October, The Scholastic book fayre is coming back to St Joseph’s.
As we all know reading is VERY important at our school, so we are going to hold a fun competition! We would really like everyone to join in. Get your family and friends involved to help you.
For a chance to win a £5 vouchers to spend at the book fayre, you will need to complete the reading challenge before the 5th October with winners being drawn on the 6th during assembly.
Simply complete all the boxes on the challenge grid and get your parents to sign below each box. You can complete more than one box at a time. For example, you could read “The Tiger that came to Tea”, in your pyjamas, under your covers and that is 3 boxes completed.
Reading is great fun and we would love to see any pictures of you competing the challenges. Please email to them
REMEMBER!!!!!
YOU HAVE TO BE IN IT TO WIN IT!!!!
RESULTS
We rose to the challenge in true St. Joseph's fashion!
Mr Kelly, the original Reading Champion, set Ms Lally a challenge beyond all challenges, to inspire us to read and enjoy it. We are pleased to say that she rose to the challenge with children reading in all sorts of wonderful places and in a variety of different ways. Well done to all the children who took part, especially to the winning children from each class who won a voucher for the school book fayre.
Well done Ms Lally, you are now OFFICIALLY, a Reading Champion!
REMEMBER: KEEP READING
A message from Ms Lally, our NEW Infant Reading Champion.
Thank you so much to everyone that took part in the reading competition. It was amazing to see the effort and enjoyment displayed to everyone that took part. Thank you for all the photos and videos that were sent in. Here is a small collection of these.
Masked Reader
Easter Reading Challenge
Reading Champions 2022/23
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Updated October 2023