Cranbrook Primary School
Equity for all
The Drive, Ilford, Essex, IG1 3PS
Phone: 0208 518 2562
Reading
At Cranbrook, we want our children to build a life-long love for reading by exploring their curiosity through memorable learning experiences. Reading at Cranbrook widens pupils’ horizons, stimulates their imagination and develops their understanding of the world. We begin the process of learning to read in the Early Years Foundation Stage, where we believe that the systematic teaching of phonics is the fastest and most effective way of enabling young children to start reading. We aim to expose our children to an ever widening range of culturally diverse, classic and modern texts to develop critical thinking skills and resilience in learning. Research shows that reading ability is one of the most important indicators of success in later life. We enable our children to become confident and articulate communicators by enriching their vocabulary using a range of high quality texts. We equip our children with the phonic skills to decode words and by the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2), our pupils leave our school as independent readers with a passion for reading, well prepared to tackle the next stage of their educational journey. We aspire for our children to appreciate the power of reading and we have a strong focus on this within our school.
At Cranbrook we develop phonics and early reading skills using TWINKL Phonics. Teachers assess phonics using rigorous assessments to ensure children are developing their segmenting, blending, and decoding skills. All 1-1 reading books across the school from EYFS-Year 6 are closely matched to our phonics scheme using Collins BigCat books and Rhino Readers. These books will be selected to match the pupils current phonics level in EYFS and KS1 and their reading level in KS2. We also use Dandelion Launchers books for some of our beginner and reluctant readers which are also matched closely to our phonics scheme. These books have been selected as they build a child’s self-esteem and encourage confidence in independent reading. These books provide practice whilst offering different stories. Each unit introduces new letters/sounds while revising previously taught phonic letters/sounds and high-frequency or sight words. Across the school we promote and encourage children to select an additional reading for pleasure text from the classroom library.
Useful Links
The concept of nurture highlights the importance of social environments – who you’re with, and not who you’re born to – and its significant influence on social emotional skills, wellbeing and behaviour. Children and young people who have a good start in life are shown to have significant advantages over those who have experienced missing or distorted early attachments. They tend to do better at school, attend regularly, form more meaningful friendships and are significantly less likely to offend or experience physical or mental health problems.
The nurturing approach offers a range of opportunities for children and young people to engage with missing early nurturing experiences, giving them the social and emotional skills to do well at school and with peers, develop their resilience and their capacity to deal more confidently with the trials and tribulations of life, for life.