SEN Newsletter - Summer 2013 - Staffordshire Learning Net ...

13
Springfield School
love to READ
Developing Reading in Key Stage 1
As we are all aware, the latest Ofsted developments highlight the
importance of raising levels of attainment for our pupils in basic skills
which can be quite a challenge!! At Springfield we have explored a
range of different reading schemes but our square pegs just won’t
quite fit into the round holes no matter how we try. Although we
promote all the initiatives our Key Stage 1 children still struggle with
the area of reading.
Following discussions at teachers’ meetings, the Butterflies class
teacher decided to pilot a new idea by adapting a recognised phonics
reading scheme using the Communicate2Print programme.
We began with the Stage 1 book:
• The picture books have a key symbol on each page to
promote the pupil’s attention skills, symbol recognition and
language development when sharing at school and home.
These packs also have a simple character recognition picture
matching game.
• The first word stage has the reading book with the
recommended wordlist, a blank laminated strip and a simple
character symbol recognition game.
• The remainder of Stage 1 books have the laminated strip and
symbol keyring.
We then decided to split the 100 high frequency words into 4 packs of
snap games, again adapted into symbols. This sometimes can be
difficult because some of the symbols are quite similar or even the
same, so in these cases we have decided on using the functional
words/symbols in the first instance and when pupils are consistently
recognising these, we begin to introduce the ‘difficult’ words – a little
like the ‘tricky words’ in phonics! We have found that because of the
pictures details we have been able to give the pupils clues to look for
when trying to learn their new words.