Phonics & Reading

Phonics

We believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. Therefore, we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme.

We start teaching phonics in the Spring Term of Nursery and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

In Reception, we build from 20-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson quickly. Each Friday, we review the week's teaching to help children become fluent readers. Our children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term. By following the expectations and progress of the scheme:

• Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
• Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Any child who needs additional practice has daily keep-up support, taught by a highly trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning. These short, sharp lessons last 15-20 minutes daily and have been designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading.

We timetable daily Phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 and above who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics screening check.

Early Reading

We value reading as a crucial life skill. We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to ensure our children develop a love of reading and always want to choose to read. The children are able to pick a library book each week as their reading for pleasure book to share with parents, carers, friends and family.

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have shared Reading Leaders who drives the early reading programme in our school. These staff members are highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading and they monitor and support our reading team so everyone teaches in line with the Little Wandle Letters scheme.

We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These:

• are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six children.
• use books matched to the children's secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids.
• are monitored by the class teacher and teaching assistants, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.

Each reading practice session has a clear focus, so that the demands of the session do not overload the children's working memory. The reading practice sessions have been designed to focus on three key reading skills:

• decoding.
• prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression.
• comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

On the Little Wandle website there is a page to support Phonics and Reading at home.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/