A Trosnant reader has:                                      

• • Excellent phonic knowledge and skills.
  • Fluency and accuracy in reading across a wide range of contexts throughout the curriculum.
  • Knowledge of an extensive and rich vocabulary.
  • An excellent comprehension of texts.
  • Read a variety of texts inside and outside of school.
  • Secure understanding of comprehensive skills that they can apply effectively to reading.

Phonics and Spelling at Trosnant

In order to develop fluent early readers, we recognise that we need to use a systematic approach to teaching phonics. Consistent, high quality phonics teaching and learning plays a fundamental part in aiding the children to develop and apply the skills in all areas of the English Curriculum; this is achieved through the Monster Phonics programme. Daily lessons are delivered with enthusiasm and confidence to inspire progress amongst all our children at Trosnant. 

Across Early Years and Key Stage 1, we use the Monster Phonics Programme which is a systematic, synthetic phonics programme for teaching phonics skills, starting with initial sounds, blending and segmenting. It also introduces children to ‘tricky’ words that cannot be decoded phonetically alongside high frequency words which are integral to building sight vocabulary.  Each vowel sound has an animated, colourful character to stimulate children’s engagement and memory.

 Meet the Monsters!

Monster Phonics has a clear philosophy:

• Colour-coded sounds to support memory and facilitate understanding.
• Monster sound cues and actions to support memory and increase engagement.
• Rapid approach to the teaching of graphemes, grammatical rules HFW and CEW to improve reading fluency and access to the wider curriculum.
• Consolidate and apply learning in meaningful and purposeful real contexts.
• Formative assessment to provide opportunities to quickly identify those children who need additional support to keep up; through the use of the Monster Phonics intervention programme,

As the children move into Key Stage 2, the children follow the Grammarsaurus Spelling Programme, which is personalised to suit the individual needs of our children at Trosnant. The spelling rules are applied and taught through a variety of engaging and fun activities. To develop the spelling expectations across the school we have a list of ‘Trosnant Non-Negotiables’, along with the year groups

Reading at Trosnant

We strive to enable our children to become fluent readers and promote a love of reading at Trosnant. Great importance is attached to enabling our children to become fluent readers. We strive to create a text-rich environment for all of our children which appeals to their varied interests. All children will be given the opportunity to read to an adult in school at least once a week. Children are expected to read at least 3 times a week to an adult at home, and this should be documented in each child’s reading diary and monitored weekly by the class teacher. Each child has a book which is in line with their reading level, as well as books from the library to read for pleasure.

Book Buddies is an opportunity for different year groups to mix and share their love for reading, as well as giving older children the opportunity to read and share their knowledge with the younger years.

Book Talk is taught weekly.  We often link our text driver to other curriculum areas. This may be taught as group or whole class.

In KS2 children are introduced to the Scholastic Pro Reading scheme. Each child is assessed termly to inform a reading level. When a child has read a book, they complete a quiz about the book to develop comprehension skills.

All children are able to take a variety of fiction and non-fiction books home which they can access in our libraries. Each class has an allocated weekly library slot when they can exchange library books and undertake research.

Each year group have a ‘Trosnant Favourite Five’. These change termly and underpin a variety of genres. Throughout the term the children are given opportunities to immerse themselves in these rich texts during our reading sessions.

We have a reading reward system which continues to develop a love of reading. The children can climb the prize ladder, striving to reach the top prize; a ‘Golden Ticket’ to enter ‘Trosnant’s ‘Trove of Treasure’s’’!

This year for World Book Day we focussed on the book “The Day the Crayons Quit” and invited staff and children to come to school wearing one colour, effectively dressed as a crayon. The day was a great success.