Our aim is to develop enjoyment and a love of reading. All children are encouraged to take books home regularly to read and share with their families. We have multiple copies of the Monster Phonics scheme books that are sent home to be read three times (we call these 'practice books') and non-scheme books and are used to develop a love of reading for independent or "shared" reading with parents.
At Milford School, reading is taught through our daily phonics lessons in all year groups (Monster Phonics) and Guided Reading, where a teacher reads with small groups of children. This is an effective strategy because it gives the teacher the opportunity to ask the children questions about the text they have read, ensure it is pitched appropriately to allow for fluency and proseity and to then discuss it at length. There are also opportunities throughout the week for children read on a 1:1 basis with an adult. Where children aren't making the progress expected, we utilise our staff and funding from the National Tutoring Programme to provide intervention, helping our less confident children to make rapid progress.
Starting in Reception, children are taught to read through phonics, where we use the Monster Phonics scheme, including high frequency (sight) word recognition to enable them to read unfamiliar words and to tackle new texts confidently. The children learn about different 'Monsters' who are colour coded to help the children learn and embed different rules and patterns.
For our school, we believe the multi-sensory, active approach when learning to read, best fits the needs of our children. Our children agree too - "we really love the monsters" "they help us to know and remember sounds"