Early Reading

We strive to create fluent, able readers who are confident and show a love of reading. To help us to achieve this, we use decodable reading books throughout EYFS and Key stage 1. These are 'The Big Cat Letters and Sounds' books which have been closely aligned to our No Nonsense phonics programme. 

When a child reads, if they struggle over decoding words, then comprehension and interest is lost. The decodable books allow our children to practise the sounds that they already know whilst building confidence, understanding and fluency. Through reading these, all children achieve success and this in turn builds enthusiasm and a love of reading. The books are a combination of fiction, non-fiction and poetry to allow pupils to a wide range of genres and to broaden their reading library.   

Around the end of Key stage 1 (or once they have finished the decodable reading scheme), children move to the book banding system. Following an assessment based on their fluency and comprehension skills, each pupil is allocated a colour band and they choose books from within this colour to read at home.

Decodable Book Order

Lilac - Introduction to texts (no words)

Pink - Simple phonetic words (often repeated)

Red - Building up to simple sentences (often repeated words)

Yellow 

Blue

Green

Orange

Children take home a new decodable book on a weekly basis and this is accompanied by keeping the previous decodable or book band book to ensure they have time to build up their fluency and accuracy. Alongside the decodable and book band texts, children will self-select a library book, which they choose purely for pleasure. This could be a book that is a little too hard, a little too easy, or just right. This aims to develop the love of reading but also enables children to widen their vocabulary and understanding of different texts.