
Woodpeckers Caving
Woodpeckers had a special treat on Thursday and the children had an amazing time finding their way through all the tunnels, sometimes even in the
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Here at Woodmancote, we pride ourselves on being a school committed to developing a love for reading; this runs right through our school community, from the children, to the parents and all members of our school staff team. We recognise how important it is to develop a passion for reading in our children, to enable them to be successful learners in all areas of the curriculum and in life beyond our school.
Children in our school have the opportunity to read at least once a day for pleasure. This is timetabled into the school day as “Drop Everything And Read” or “DEAR time” as it’s known by the children. Children have access to high quality texts from classroom book corners. Teachers also prioritise reading aloud to their classes; in EYFS/KS1 this happens a minimum of once a day and in KS2 a minimum of 3 times a week.
For guidance on how to support your child with reading for pleasure at home, have a look at this leaflet, which has some great ideas on how to promote enjoyment in reading all the way up to Year 6 and beyond.
You can also use these great supportive resources from the Education Endowment Foundation to guide you when reading with your child/children.
Top tips for supporting your children with reading in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
Top tips for supporting your children with reading in Key Stage 2
Books for topics offer a “top 100” books for each year group if you’re looking for even more inspiration!
Little Chestnuts Books for Topics List
Reception Books for Topics List
At Woodmancote we use the systematic, synthetic phonics programme, Rocket Phonics to teach with rigour and fidelity. We teach our phonics, so that is accessible to all, by planning for 100% engagement from each child. Synthetic systematic phonics is a key skill that supports the development of early reading.
We place our quality phonics teaching in a language rich curriculum, with exposure to a range of both physical and digital texts. We continually aim to make strides towards closing the word gap.
Working alongside parents and carers we aim to provide our pupils with the skills they need to have a successful start to their lives as readers and to ensure that our children develop a love of reading.
In Little Chestnuts, children learn listening skills needed to ‘tune in’ to phonetic sounds in preparation for starting to learn to read.
From Reception children learn phonetic sounds to enable them to begin to blend simple words; this is steadily built up to learn all of the 44 phonemes in the English language represented in a variety of letter combinations. As well as this, they are taught to recognise key exception words as they progress through their early reading journey.
Children continue their phonics journey throughout EYFS and KS1. In Year 2, when children are confidently decoding and reading with increasing fluency, they begin to focus more on comprehension with additional sessions to develop this.
Children are provided with a reading book matched to their reading development in order to embed the reading skills learnt. Parents/carers are encouraged to share these books at home to ensure that children make rapid and sustained progress.
Progression Map – Reception and Year 1 Rocket Phonics
Read more about Phonics Terminology
See the Rocket Phonics Flashcards:
Rocket Phonics Flashcards Set 1
Rocket Phonics Flashcards Set 2
See the Rocket Phonics Sounds Mats:
During the last academic year, we have made significant changes to our provision for reading teaching.
From Year 3, children across the school have a minimum of two taught reading lessons a week. These are whole class reading sessions focussed on a class text. These are developed to excite children about reading and provide a balance between practising reading fluency, discussion based learning and written comprehension.
Key Text Overview
Progression Grid of Reading Skills
We are always on the lookout for volunteers to come into school to read with our children. If you are able to volunteer a couple of hours of your time, please email Mr Ridal (lridal@woodmancote.gloucs.sch.uk). If you currently come into school to read with our children, please see the following presentations which give an overview for how we approach reading and phonics at Woodmancote School.
Phonics Training for Volunteers
The Fantastic Intergalactic Hamster!
This is a brand new adventure in the hilarious series for 7+ readers from bestselling author Rachel Morrisroe. The book packed with laughs, heart and superhero pets – What more could you ask for!
“When a spaceship crash-lands outside of Rebecca Refractor’s school full of aliens who look just like adorable hamsters, she knows there is only one kid and Superpet that can help . . . Jack and Hercules the hamster, the superstrength Superpet! The alien-hamsters can control minds and are determined to turn everyone on Earth into cracker-hunting zombies! But why are the aliens so cracker obsessed? And who (or what) is The Big Cheese – the villain boss the aliens serve?”
Lost in the clouds
This moving and sensitively-written picture book gently explores grief and teaches children how to deal with their emotions surrounding the death of a loved one. With beautiful and colourful illustrations to accompany the touching narrative, this children’s book is perfect for adults to share with their children and to help them understand what they are going through.
“Billy misses his mummy very much. She lives in the clouds. Some days the sun is shining and Mummy’s clouds are nowhere to be seen. Those are Billy’s favourite days. He and Daddy would play in the garden all day long, and Billy knows that Mummy is letting the sun shine for them. But not all days are like that. Sometimes Mummy’s clouds are dark, and Billy feels sad and alone”
‘ Podkin is the son of a warrior chieftain. He knows that one day it will be up to him to lead his warren and guard it in times of danger. But for now, he’s quite happy to laze around annoying his older sister Paz, and playing with his baby brother Pook. Then Podkin’s home is brutally attacked, and the young rabbits are forced to flee. The terrifying Gorm are on the rampage, and no one and nowhere is safe. With danger all around them, Podkin must protect his family, uncover his destiny, and attempt to defeat the most horrifying enemy rabbit kind has ever known.’
‘The only rule for attending this party is . . . you MUST bring a hat. But what if you don’t own a hat? Will bringing a monkey wearing a hat be enough? Find out in this tale that builds to a gloriously surreal and hilarious ending.’
Woodpeckers had a special treat on Thursday and the children had an amazing time finding their way through all the tunnels, sometimes even in the
In Reception our theme this term is celebrations. One of the celebrations we found out about was the Diwali. We had a visit from Mrs
In Reception we have been learning about the changing seasons from Autumn to winter. We particularly enjoyed exploring our outdoor area in the snow.
This term, Y3 have had a go at making some Stone Age Tools! We got the idea from reading the book ‘Stone Age Boy’ where
In October, a group of Year 4 and 5 pupils attended The Cheltenham Literature Festival. We began our morning at the story telling tent; listening
This term, Year 5 were very lucky to be visited by Darren Rees; the host of the “Football For Kids” podcast. Darren was invited to