Phonics is the building blocks to reading; the tools the children need to decode words. Comprehension is the understanding of the words they are reading.

If a child masters phonics whilst they are in KS1, they begin understanding comprehension through RWInc. Comprehension. This is an ideal transition for the children as they already know the routines and management signals from RWInc. Phonics. Each module consists of a fiction and non-fiction text – the first is the ideal length for children’s reading stamina at this stage, the second shares the same theme but is shorter and perfect for developing children’s writing.

Once a child enters KS2, they begin on Pathways to Read. Each unit provides a progressive development of reading skills that follows a mastery approach. Pathways guarantees complete coverage of the content domains, incorporating high-quality discussions that revolve around the essence of rich language. There are six units per year and they mostly centre around one book:

Pathways to Read follows a mastery approach to learning with three categories of skills developed each half term:

• Ongoing skills – linked to text choices and achieved through selection of teaching activities
• Core skills – prediction, vocabulary development and retrieval
• Mastery skills – 2-3 objectives are focused on for pupils to master over the course of the half-term

Every unit consists of six whole class reading sessions following the four-part structure:

• Predict
• Clarify vocabulary
• Read and retrieve
• Read and explain

The core elements of each session are prediction, developing pupils’ vocabulary and retrieval. The ‘Read and explain’ part of the lesson is the mastery focus for the majority of sessions.

We supplement Pathways to Read with a scheme called Cracking Comprehension. It has high-quality extracts from such authors as Dick-King Smith, Michael Morpurgo and William Shakespeare. It gives the opportunity for children to answer questions on a cold text that they are not familiar and the questions are from various content domains.
The software also enables teachers to visually explain the process of scanning through a text to find evidence and how to convert that into a full answer. during each unit, children will read the text aloud, read it silently, read it with a partner, echo read, listen to the teacher read and listen to the software’s audio version. A large portion of time is spent looking at new or challenging vocabulary and giving the children strategies to comprehend these words.

“Reading is fabulous, we do it every day!” – Lexi FS2