At Warren Dell our aim is to develop enjoyment and a love of reading. All children are encouraged to take books home regularly to read and share with their families. 

We believe that phonics teaching should be: 

• Systematic

• Discrete

• Interactive and multi-sensory

• Practical and engaging

Reading is taught through our daily phonics lessons groups (Monster Phonics) and Guided Reading, where a teacher reads with small groups of children.  This is an effective strategy because it gives the teacher the opportunity to ask the children questions about the text they have read and discuss it at length.

Across the whole school, starting in Reception, children are taught to read through phonics, where we use the Monster Phonics scheme, including high frequency (sight) word recognition to enable them to read unfamiliar words and to tackle new texts confidently. The children learn about different 'Monsters' who are colour coded to help the children learn and embed different rules and patterns.

Each phonics session will follow the same structure.

1. Revisit/Recap

2. Teach

3. Practise

4. Apply

5. Assess

All Year One children take the ‘Phonics Screening Check’ - a statutory assessment required by legislation.

Once children have completed our phonics programme, reading remains at the heart of our curriculum. Reading is taught in a variety of ways including whole class reading sessions and comprehension lessons as well as specific targeted intervention work.  

All children, across the key stages, read regularly at school and are encouraged to continue this avid reading at home. Whilst children make their way through the colour banded reading levels, books are correctly matched to their current phase of phonological learning and reviewed by trained members of staff regularly. On the completion of the coloured levels, children progress to ‘free reader’ status which allows them to choose books carefully matched to their age-related standard, both appropriate in structure and content.