Language
Regarding the fire at SS Simon and Jude CE Primary School on 17th August ’23, we would like to reassure everyone that no one has been hurt and to thank our fire fighters who worked tirelessly to bring it under control. Please find our latest update here. The school Principal will email parents directly with further updates and information - school can be reached via their office email: sssjoffice@vantageacademies.co.uk.
At SSSJ reading is the gateway to the whole curriculum. We place a strong emphasis on children being able to read fluently with automaticity to ensure children are able to read independently and gain knowledge themselves. We also believe that reading can open doors to a range of opportunities, promoting lifelong learning and success.
The most successful and proven strategy to teach word reading is high-quality phonics teaching. It is high-quality phonics teaching that secures those crucial skills of word reading that once mastered enable children to decode automatically and accurately. Reading automatically frees up their working memory to be able to focus on the meaning of the text that they read. So until children are reading both accurately and automatically, their working memory is going to be taken up with the decoding process. Because of this they’ll find it difficult to focus on the meaning of what they read, even if they understand all the words and that is why it’s so important that children quickly become fluent readers.
We can achieve this through school and home working together. Parent support is invaluable in promoting reading at home, regardless of the age of the child.
To achieve this vision, SSSJ has invested in the Read Write Inc Phonics Programme. We use this as our reading scheme alongside Oxford Reading Tree.
Phonics teaches children the link between letters and the sounds they represent.
In phonics we use the word grapheme to talk about the letters on the page and phoneme to talk about the sounds those letters represent.
It can take until Year 2/Primary 3 before your child might have learned all 44 sounds in English and the many different spellings used for each sound.
In phonics we use the word decode to talk about reading a single word. We use the word segment to talk about breaking a word down into separate sounds and blend to talk about putting the sounds together to make a word.
The parent videos in the links below provide an overview of the Read Write Inc Programme.
What is Read Write Inc Phonics?
Parent video: What is Read Write Inc Phonics – YouTube
How to say the sounds
Parent video: How to say the sounds – YouTube
Sound Blending
To further support parents in helping your child to read at home, school is hosting a range of face to face parent workshops as detailed below. Parents will receive additional letters linked to these workshops.
Additional information can also be found in your child’s student planner.
To ensure we reach the vast majority of parents, you will find a copy of the presentation in the links below