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We want to help all our children to be successful readers who love reading.

We hope that the information on this page will help you to understand our approach to reading and phonics, and give you ideas for how you can help at home.

If you have any questions about reading or phonics at Water Street, please speak to your child's class teacher.

Phonics - 'Our Unique Approach'

The staff at Water Street School are proud to have developed their own systematic, synthetic phonics planning programme based on the Letters and Sounds approach.

This planning programme has been developed, continuously evaluated and refined over several years, using the expertise of effective classroom practitioners taking advice from external phonics experts, in order to provide a tightly focused systematic approach to the teaching early reading and writing.

The programme includes planning through specific phases with daily sessions, targeted intervention and a very rigorous approach.  Staff across the whole school adhere to it with fidelity and as a result it has a proven track record to not only meet, but exceed expectations based on the Early Learning Goals for The Reception Year and the National Curriculum for Year One, year after year.

We are incredibly proud that our school phonics programme has a proven track record and excellent results, even in those ‘lock down’ years.  Results of the Phonics Screening Check taken at the end of Year 1 remain consistently high and significantly above regional and national data.

 
Year 1 Phonics Screening Water Street National
2023 83% 79%
2022 100% 75%
2021 94% Assessment cancelled due to pandemic
2020 100% Assessment cancelled due to pandemic
2019 97% 82%
2018 97% 81%