Our aspiration is that all our pupils who can learn to read will be supported to do so before they leave Yewstock School. For our sensory learners, we are passionate about giving them the best communication skills possible. Yewstock School is also passionate to encourage reading for pleasure and keeps a diverse range of books in our libraries and in classes.
Learning to read can take longer for pupils in a specialist setting but we are relentless in our efforts to develop the skills of reading. It is one of the most important skills for life.
Yewstock School uses evidence-based reading strategies of which Read Write Inc. and Fresh Start are our main programmes. These are systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) approaches which teach decoding explicitly. It is adapted to suit the needs of our pupils.
Our teaching of reading is embedded in our universal approach however, some pupils may be identified to receive targeted work with our specialists. The Simple View of Reading (SVR) helps us to identify pupils’ strengths and areas to develop, whether this is decoding or comprehending or a mixture of both.
In addition, Professor Snowling’s reading research shows that reading requires, phonics and phonological awareness to decode and narrative, active listening and vocabulary to understand.
To ensure we cover all reading components, Yewstock school offers the following to supplement RWI:
Black Sheep narrative programme
The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) in early years and KS1.
Active listening skills across the school.
Word Aware and Concept Cat to teach vocabulary explicitly.