English has a pre-eminent place in education and in society. A high-quality education in English will teach pupils to speak and write fluently so that they can communicate their ideas and emotions to others, and through their reading and listening, others can communicate with them. Through reading in particular, pupils have a chance to develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. Literature, especially, plays a key role in such development. Reading also enables pupils both to acquire knowledge and to build on what they already know. All the skills of language are essential to participating fully as a member of society; pupils who do not learn to speak, read and write fluently and confidently are effectively disenfranchised.

Writing

At Ashcombe, our teaching of writing is based on the work of Judith Hochman & Natalie Wexler's 'The Writing Revolution' to aim for systematic teaching of writing skills. We have supplemented this with Alan Peat's 'Exciting Sentences' approach. Using these sources alongside evidence based practice from the Education Endowment Foundation's recommendations for literacy alongside consultancy from Alex Quigley, writing at Ashcombe follows the following sequence:

We believe this gives our students the tools to become effective writers and support their reading and comprehension in turn. Please see our progression document for the teaching of writing below:

Phonics Scheme

At Ashcombe we use Unlocking Letters and Sounds which was validated by the DfE in December 2021. 

We begin teaching phonics in the first few weeks of term 1 in Reception and children make rapid progress in their reading journey. Children begin to learn the main sounds heard in the English Language and how they can be represented, as well as learning ‘Common Exception’ words for Phases 2, 3 and 4. They use these sounds to read and write simple words, captions and sentences. Children leave Reception being able to apply the phonemes taught within Phase 2, 3 and 4.

 In Year 1 through Phase 5a, b and c, they learn any alternative spellings and pronunciations for the graphemes and additional Common Exception Words. By the end of Year 1 children will have mastered using phonics to decode and blend when reading and segment when spelling. In Year 1 all children are screened using the national Phonics Screening Check.

In Year 2, phonics continues to be revisited to ensure mastery of the phonetic code and any child who does not meet age related expectations will continue to receive support to close identified gaps.

To ensure no child is left behind at any point in the progression, children are regularly assessed and supported to keep up through bespoke 1-1 interventions. These include GPC recognition and blending and segmenting interventions.

The lowest attaining 20% of pupils are closely monitored to ensure these interventions have an impact.

Reading Scheme 

We promote a 'phonics first' approach and in both our guided reading sessions at school and in the books children take home, texts are very closely matched to a child's current phonics knowledge so that every child can experience real success in their reading. In these crucial early stages of reading we primarily use books from Rising Stars Reading Planet, to ensure complete fidelity to the Unlocking Letters and Sounds progression we follow.

Once children progress beyond decodable texts, they move onto our book scheme so that they can continue to progress in their decoding, fluency and comprehension skills to become avid, expert readers.

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Supporting Reading at Home:

• Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.
• We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound)
• We want children to practise reading their book 3 times across the week working on these skills:

                Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.

                Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.

                Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds.

More support for parents and carers can be found here:

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/essential-letters-and-sounds/  

https://vimeo.com/753929025/5eaa45c0aa  Phase 2

https://vimeo.com/753931102/b9a2f8194f Phase 3

https://vimeo.com/753933192/43104a30e0 Phase 5

Reading

Our ambition is to build a nationally renowned reading programme.

Our vision is to diminish the effects of disadvantage by equipping our learners with the ‘master skill’ of school, which unlocks the academic curriculum.

Fiction Reading Canon

Our students begin Our approach to Reading at Ashcombe has been built upon the research and work of Doug Lemov, Coleen Driggs and Erica Woolway's 'Reading Reconsidered' alongside 'Closing the Vocabulary Gap' by Alex Quigley. Students are taught reading daily based on our school canon of texts which can be seen below. By systematically working our way through a rich diet of texts which deliberately build our student reading experience and vocabulary before they leave us in year 6.

Embedded Informational Texts

One of the main difficulties pupils encounter when starting secondary school and moving onto further education is the reading challenge. Navigating a range of complex informational texts in different subject disciplines and the associated vocabulary in those texts can be a barrier to many pupils. We are embedding non-fiction texts into our curriculum to conquer that reading challenge. We equip our pupils with broader subject knowledge, widen their vocabulary and explicitly teach how to navigate these texts.

Reading for pleasure

Every child is listened to once a week and our children who need more support to read are read with with three times per week. We are investing in new class reading resources and a new literacy hub - housing a high-quality current children's literature is being built as part of our EIS Project to provide a rich and inspiring choice of reading for pleasure books for all children.  

Children who can read independently take part in accelerated reader to motivate and encourage a love of reading.