In Key Stage One, we build on the outstanding foundations for reading which the children experience in our Early Years.
The children’s reading journey through Key Stage One is carefully planned to ensure that all children are given the opportunity to make accelerated progress and become confident, independent readers who are developing a love of books.
All classrooms have their own reading corners which are filled with a variety of reading materials including fiction, non—fiction and poetry.
Phonics in KS1
In year 1 and 2, children undertake a daily 45 minutes phonic session. Phonics is taught as whole class with a focus on “Keep up not catch up”
There will be a written activity recorded in a phonics exercise book when planning stipulates.
Monster Phonics is a DfE whole-class systematic synthetic phonics scheme with decodable books for children in Reception and Key Stage 1. It is also used as an intervention in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.
Monster phonics teaches children to read by enabling them to identify the individual graphemes (letter combinations) and blend the sounds (phonemes) together to read the word. The sounds are categorised into ten colour groups and each colour has a corresponding monster character.
Guided reading
At Kingsland C.E Academy, children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will undertake guided reading sessions using the Monster phonics phonetically decodable reading books.
In Reception, this will start with 1 session a week and will build up to 3 by the end of the year. In Year 1 and 2, children will undertake 3 guided reading sessions per week.
The primary focus in the first session will be decoding words and developing fluency. As the children progress throughout the week, this will build up to developing comprehension skills, once fluency has been embedded.
All children will take home the reading book matched to the book read in the guided reading session.
Monster Phonics Decodable books
The Monster phonics books introduce new grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs) in the same order as the teaching programme, and the progression within the books is cumulative, so children can practise the phonics that they have already learned earlier in their lessons.
Each high frequency word (decodable and common exception word) is also taught in the programme before the children read it in a book. Each book focuses on a key grapheme. Monster phonics uses colour to help children learn the link between sound and spelling.
Year 1 books - Stages 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8
There are 50 books in the year 1 stages. Stories are matched to the year 1 graphemes in the KS1 curriculum. The stages focus on digraphs (including split digraphs) and trigraphs. There are phonics focus words and high frequency word practise boxes at the start of each book and questions at the end of the story to help develop children’s comprehension skills.
Year 2 books - Stages 9 and 10
There are 20 books in the year 2 stages. The stories are matched to the year 2 graphemes in the KS1 curriculum. Stages 9 and 10 focus on digraphs and trigraphs. There are phonics focus words and high frequency word practise boxes at the start of each book and questions at the end of the story to help develop children’s comprehension skills.
Individual reading
In Key Stage One, as in Early Years; children take home a reading book linked to their Monster Phonics each week. The books are matched to the Monster Phonics group to aid the development of their word recognition, phonics skills, language comprehension and reading fluency.
Children in Year 1 have their books changed weekly, where they will also take home a corresponding book from the Monster Phonics scheme to help develop word recognition and their decoding skills.
Children are heard read daily during the session and children are additional heard reading by an adult at least once a week.
The children are also encouraged to choose a book for themselves out of the Key Stage 1 library. These books are changed weekly.
Once Year 2 children are off the Monster Phonics scheme the children move on to the Big Cat Collins reading scheme, where they will be assessed using the Collins reading tool to show which level to start on.
Assessment
Assessment is regarded as an integral part of teaching and learning and is a continuous process. We strive to make our assessment purposeful, allowing us to match the correct level of work to the needs of the children, thus benefiting the children and ensuring progress.
The attainment and progress of children is assessed at each assessment point identified on the year group progression grid. Each child’s progress is tracked against phoneme recognition and blending and segmenting skills and individual progress is updated termly and continues to be updated as the child moves through school.
Intervention
If children need intervention or booster groups to reach age-related expectations in phonics, this is provided in addition to the daily phonics session so that as many children as possible can access their year group learning objectives and reach age appropriate outcomes.
All staff have access to the Monster Phonics website where they can use any of the intervention lessons. The intervention section provides keep-up resources for children identified as not keeping up through the daily assessments of the learning objectives or through the regular assessments.
Where possible, a same day approach to intervention is taken at Kingsland C.E Academy, this allows gaps in phonics knowledge to be addressed before the next phonics session.
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Created with an image by Choat - "World environment day concept: Asian children reading under big tree on book of nature"