READING

Intent

At Amesbury Archer Primary School, we want our children to ‘Aim High’ and know that they have the ability to achieve anything they put their minds to.  Our school values are central to all we do and through our curriculum we encourage our children to be:

• Aspirational – We encourage the children to extend their knowledge and understanding of vocabulary when learning phonic so they ‘Aim High’ with their learning, wanting to achieve the very best they can.
• Respectful – This is an important Archer word because it enables the children to respect the rate at which other’s learn.
• Curiosity – We encourage our children to be curious in order to encourage them to find out what the words say, what the vocabulary means and how it fits into the text or book they are reading. By fostering their natural curiosity, they will want to achieve the best they can in order to access even more language.
• Honesty – In order to create an honest learning environment, we encourage the children to be honest with their phonic learning. With this mindset, the children understand that making mistakes shows that we are trying our best and learning. 
• Enthusiasm – We love reading and writing in Amesbury Archer and, in order for the children to love reading and writing to, the adults teaching phonics are enthusiastic in their approach always thinking of ways to how excite the children with their learning.
• Resilience – When we learn to read and spell correctly, it may not be easy. In order for the children to succeed with their phonic learning we teach them to be resilient – to try, try and try again.  Learning to use this resilience is a skill which the children will keep for life and will lead them to endless successes!

At Amesbury Archer, we value how the children learn to read and that every child learns at different speeds.  When we teach the children to read, we use a phonics program to ensure they learn all the sounds they need as building blocks to successful reading and writing.  Our phonics teaching is based on the Letters and Sounds Programme.

• Children begin learning phonics in Reception working towards using their phonics in their written work, when reading to decode words and the Phonics Screening Test in Year 1.

• We use Accelerated Reader at school with the additional benefits of using MyOn, the digital online reading platform.   This allows children to read at home and at school using books suitable for the age, reading ability and interest level. Children can also quiz themselves and earn points with every book they read.