Reading

At Ark Aryton we are commited to ensuring our children become highly skilled readers, working at or above the National Standard, who develop a life-long love of reading during their time with us. We provide our children with a balanced reading diet comprising of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and classics, exposing them to great literary writers both past and present. Reading is at the heart and soul of our curriculum and we use books of all kinds to drive and support learning.

We use the Read Write Inc. reading programme which is based on "synthetic phonics"; that is, children learn what combinations of letters make all the different sounds in English, how to blend these sounds to make words, and how to decode words when they see these combinations.  

In years 3-6, we teach whole class reading for 45 minutes each day with a focus on comprehension. Good comprehension draws from linguistic knowledge (both vocabulary and grammar) and on knowledge of the world.

We have a team of four reading volunteers from the local community who come once a week to listen to readers.  We welcome volunteers who want to join us and offer training in supporting readers.

At Ark Ayrton Primary Academy, we use the Read Write Inc. phonics program to deliver robust, targeted phonics teaching so that our children have the best possible start to their reading journey.  Our team of RWI Practitioners are relentless in their dedication to ensuring each and every child at Ayrton masters phonics as as early as possible.

In phonics lessons, children learn one thing at a time, then keep practising it until they are ready to move onto the next skill. The RWI approach ensures that everything connects: children connect sounds with mnemonic pictures, words with their meanings, stories with the sounds they know, and children connect their own experiences to the stories they read.

From the very first week, we teach phonics every single day. Children are grouped according to their phonic ability so that every child makes rapid progress and any children falling behind are quickly identified. We employ a dedicated RWI teaching assistant to deliver interventions for our most vulnerable children.

We invest in the development of our Read Write Inc teachers through an ongoing relationship with the RWI team and regular coaching from our experienced Phonics Lead. We understand the importance of engaging parents: the Phonics Lead holds parent workshops and maintains an ongoing dialogue with parents regarding their children’s reading.