Reading in Primary
The focus of reading alongside English lessons is for enjoyment. Pupils are encouraged to choose books that encourage their own specialist interests.
The teaching of phonics at The Windmill School is set in the wider context of the literacy framework.
Many of our pupils are excellent decoders can work out the sounds and spellings of words. But they are not so strong at comprehension or understanding. The development of reading is a high priority for our school. We are mindful of the impact of the very different social communication profiles our autistic learners and their preference for predictability within learning.
Phonics
The majority of our pupils are competent readers and have a love of reading. In many cases our pupils have progressed through learning phonological strategies, therefore our teaching of phonics is individualised to our pupils needs.
This link may be helpful for parents to understand phonics https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/phonics/.
The learning style for autistic children is more visual than auditory based so they tend to learn whole words visually. For some children a phonics program is highly effective in enabling them to master the skill of decoding. This provides them with a strategy to read unknown words. However, for others including autistic pupils the approach is less effective.
Lessons are always structured around key texts, including novels, plays and poetry. These are carefully chosen to excite and motivate, giving our pupils opportunities to develop their reading skills and inspire their creativity. We encourage reading for pleasure, guided reading sessions take place in the class during structured English/ Literacy sessions and timetabled library lessons offer further opportunity for assessment.
Our curriculum for English covers all areas of the National Curriculum (Speaking and Listening, Reading, Writing) and autism specific methodologies to support autistic learning styles include inference strategies (reading for meaning and cartoon conversations to support the development of comprehension.
We plan our progression within the curriculum by year group and will blend goals from mixed year groups in class planning where we have mixed age and mixed ability groups. Below is an example of objectives for Key Stage 1 either Y1 or Y2.
We assess reading against our academic assessment system Connecting Steps and staff record progress against the progression steps that offer a more suitable way to record progress given the peaks and dips in our pupils learning profile.
individual reading record website.pdf