Year 2 Rocket Phonics and Reading

Dear Parents / Carers, 

 

Firstly, thank you for all of your support throughout the year in helping support reading and phonics at home. The support that you give children at home is invaluable and by regularly reading with the children, you play a huge role in the progress that they make. 

 

We are very proud of how children learn to read in our school and the love that they have for reading. While we have consistently achieved pass marks above the national average in the Year 1 phonics check and have had a consistent approach to teaching phonics in our school, we have had to make some changes in our approach in response to new guidance from the Department of Education in the form of The reading framework: teaching the foundations of early literacy.

 

New phonics scheme

As a result of this guidance, we explored a number of Systematic Synthetic Phonics schemes and after a successful trial period, we have fully adopted Rocket Phonics as our consistent approach across school. This approach is now embedded across school and it has been lovely to see the children continue to thrive in their Phonics lessons. Following further work with the author of the scheme, we will be sharing further information with you in the form of online resources and parent guides.

 

eLibrary

In addition to the physical books that children bring home, we are delighted that we have access to a comprehensive eLibrary linked to the Rocket Phonics scheme. Please note that the colour of books allocated on this new scheme will not tally with the weekly reading books your children will bring home.

 

We teach sounds and high frequency words in a specific order in phonics; the eLibrary allows us to allocate books that contain the sounds that we are currently revising during our daily phonics sessions in school. By sharing these at home on a device, it will give the children additional opportunities to apply their new learning and deepen their reading experiences. We’ve assigned the books linked to the sounds that the children have already covered and we will allocate these books on an ongoing basis. We’d like them to become part of your regular reading routine at home. 

 

While this is in no way intended to replace ‘real’ books, we know that many of our children like to read using technology and while on the move and we’re happy to give them more opportunities to do so. 

 

Your child’s login gives them access to hundreds of interactive books with quizzes at the end of each one; they can win a star for each quiz completed. While they will have open access to the library, we’ll also be using the eLibrary for specific homework tasks in certain year groups. 

 

Please click on the link: Rising Stars Guide to see how to access the eLibrary and we have put each child’s login details in their reading record. The website is https://my.risingstars-uk.com/  

 

If you have any questions regarding access to the eLibrary or phonics in school, please contact year2@kingedward.org

 

Thank you for your continued support. 

 

The Year 2 Team

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