Early reading is pivotal in a child’s ability to succeed in life.  At Chase Lane this is taken very seriously and word recognition starts at a very early age.  Children in the nursery very quickly learn to recognise their name and will start to discriminate between different sounds in the environment. This may not sound like reading but without these skills, children could struggle to make good progress.

In Reception and Year 1 a lot of work is put into reading on a daily basis.  Children work on learning phonics.   This is the teaching of the 44 sounds that make up the words in the English language. Children are taught the sounds discreetly and then taught how to blend them together to make words.   The children even have fun with this and use the sounds to make up words that don’t exist ‘Alien words’. 

To support the children and families in securing a strong understanding of the phonics, homework is set on a weekly basis to consolidate the learning.

Children experience an excellent phonics programme that is delivered daily and Chase Lane have a particularly good reputation for achieving high results in this area. 

Phonics is an excellent teaching tool but the English language is very complicated and not all words fit phonetic patterns.  In such cases, these words are known as common misconception words and have to be learnt by the children.

In addition to the teaching of phonics all children are provided daily opportunities to read in a range of subjects during the school day.  Classes enjoy many whole class reading opportunities and have really become very skilled in retrieving, inferring and evaluating texts.

Reading colour bands and Chase Lane level guidance

                                Colour Band                                                 Chase Lane level guidance