"There is no such thing as a child who hates to read; there are only children who have not found the right book."     Frank Serefini

At Terrington we know how important reading is to our future success and wellbeing and try to encourage and foster a love of reading in all of our learners.

We start by teaching our learners reading through the structured Phonics Scheme

Essential Letters and Sounds

The aim of ELS is 'Getting all children to read well, quickly'. It teaches learners to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest units of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words. 

Learners begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Throughout the day, learners will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. 

Learners continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through school to ensure learners become confident, fluent readers. 

We follow the ELS progression and sequence (see Phase 2, 3 and 5 ELS Guides for Parents below). We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving on to digraphs eg. sh (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs eg. high (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs eg. Leigh (four letters spelling one sound). 

We teach learners to:

• Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
• Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately

ELS is designed on the principle that learners should 'keep up' rather than 'catch up'. Intervention is delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any learner who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with the appropriate support. Where further support is required 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short and specific. 

More guidance for parents is available in the Starting School Section of this website and under the EYFS and Y1&2 sections of the Learners Pages.

Our aim is to create learners who are fluent, enthusiastic readers. Structured decodable reading books are matched to the phonics level of our early readers.

More guidance for parents about reading is available under the Reading section of each of the Learner Pages.