Reading and Phonics

Communication and Reading are essential life skills and they are prioritised across all areas of our curriculum and learning at Lindon Bennett. Classrooms at Lindon Bennett are Literacy rich environments through the use of CIP symbols and written words. We teach pupils the skills that they need by providing hands on explorative sessions and real life experiences both inside and outside of the classroom that motivate and encourage our pupils to learn.

The children who attend Lindon Bennett have severe or profound learning difficulties and many of our children have in addition to this, a diagnosis of Autism.  Children with a diagnosis of Autism will often use whole word recognition to read words, only a very few number of our children are able to segment and blend phonemes to read unfamiliar words so our approach to Reading is personalised to each individual student based on our initial assessments.

We follow a whole school phonics and reading programme.  Across both sites, all children follow the Twinkl phonics reading programme up to level 1 with the focus on being able to discriminate between sounds in the environment.  Children who have been identified as phonetical readers continue to work through the levels of the Twinkl phonics reading programme which is DfE approved and validated.

All children have access to books in their classroom and children who are reading are able to take reading books home with a reading record book.  They also have access to the Oxford Owl Reading Buddy which gives pupils and teachers an opportunity to read a range of texts that are a suitable level and can also be accessed at home.

Planning across all key stages has a primary text as a focus and children who have been identified as reading at a certain level may also have additional one to one reading sessions or guided group reading sessions to support their understanding and comprehension, weekly.