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Phonics/reading at Roselands
At Roselands, we teach phonics using the systematic, synthetic program Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. At Roselands school, we use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme designed to help your child learn to read quickly and confidently. From the very beginning of Reception, children are taught the link between letters (graphemes) and the sounds they make (phonemes). They learn to "decode" words by spotting the letters, saying the individual sounds, and blending them together to read the whole word. Alongside this, we teach "tricky words"—those common words like the or said that cannot be easily sounded out yet. To build their fluency and love for reading, your child will also practice reading fully decodable books in school that perfectly match the specific sounds they have already mastered, meaning they can read them with success and independence.Please find some useful links for families, below.
Little Wandle Resources for Parents
https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
Little Wandle Reading for Pleasure
https://www.littlewandle.org.uk/resources/my-letters-and-sounds/everybody-read/
READING
At Roselands we love to read!
The teaching of Reading, both the technical aspects of decoding language and the opportunity for children to develop a love of reading, is one of the most important aspects of school life at Roselands School. We are determined that every pupil will learn to read, regardless of their background, needs or abilities and that all of our children, including our weakest readers, make sufficient progress to meet or exceed age-related expectations. We believe our approach to reading is progressive and ensures children leave us with the skills they need to enjoy a range of texts and genres and prepare them for future life experiences.
Once children have completed Little Wandle and are confident and fluent readers, they are taught reading comprehension. Reading is taught every day and focuses on using active reading strategies like predicting, asking questions, retrieving information, and summarising. We use a range of materials to support these sessions, including Complete Comprehension, high-quality texts, Little Wandle Fluency books.
SPELLING
Spelling is a key feature of achieving age related expectations in all year groups. At Roselands we use the HFL Education's ESSENTIAL SPELLING programme as the basis of our spelling curriculm. Through the ESSENTIAL WRITING scheme, the children are supported to apply this learning in context and build their spelling confidence. All the writing models reflect age-approrate spelling objectives and children are taught how to edit for accuracy of spelling.
The statutory spelling lists for years 3 and 4 and years 5 and 6 are referred to regularly and we ask parents to support their children in learning the words on these lists.
When learning words, children are encouraged to think about the root word and how it can be extended by using prefixes and suffixes. Knowing the etymology of a word is also useful in helping children to define unknown words. For example, if a child recognises that "auto" means "by itself", this will help them to decode and spell words like autopilot and automatic. Similarly, if they understand that the root word "bio" is Greek for "life" and that "graph" is Greek for "written", they can use this knowledge to unpick the meaning of biography. If they combine all this knowledge, they should be able to grasp autobiography too.
Oracy
Speaking and Listening is a very important part of our whole curriculum and is the basis of a lot of the work that we do. If children cannot talk in sentences they cannot write in sentences. Our children are given lots of opportunities to talk within lessons to rehearse what they may later write as well as to discuss their learning and verbalise their thinking. Where possible, we have theatre groups visiting school so that the children see actors performing lines with expression and enthusiasm. These visits help the children when taking part in their own year groups plays each year.
At Roselands we provide our pupils with many opportunities to develop their oracy skills. Our Learning Ambassadors greet visitors and explain what they are learning in class; our Learner Voice council meet to discuss the curriculum and how things can be improved in the school, attending Trust wide meetings to then discuss issues. Our Head and Deputy Head students present at school assemblies and other whole school events and our House Captains deliver speeches to their houses.
