Phonics and Early Reading

Phonics and Early Reading

We teach Phonics (the way letters make sounds) through the systematic synthetic  programme ‘Little Wandle’, which we have carefully adapted to suit the needs of our children. 

Little Wandle has been built around the update (Letters and Sounds improving rates of progress 2021) and draws on our own school’s excellent practice. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised also draws on the latest research into how children learn best; how to ensure learning stays in children’s long term memory and how best to enable children to apply their learning to become highly competent readers.
 

Ar Margaret Wix, our aim is to build children’s speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonetic knowledge and skills. 

Supporting your child with reading

Although your child will be taught to read at school, you can have a huge impact on their reading journey by continuing their practice at home.

There are two types of reading book that your child may bring home:

A reading practice book. This will be at the correct phonic stage for your child. They should be able to read this fluently and independently.

A sharing book.  Your child will not be able to read this on their own. This book is for you both to read and enjoy together.

Reading practice book

This book has been carefully matched to your child’s current reading level. If your child is reading it with little help, please don’t worry that it’s too easy – your child needs to develop fluency and confidence in reading. They can read this book more than once.

Listen to them read the book. Remember to give them lots of praise – celebrate their success! If they can’t read a word, read it to them. After they have finished, talk about the book together.

Sharing book

In order to encourage your child to become a lifelong reader, it is important that they learn to read for pleasure. The sharing book is a book they have chosen for you to enjoy together.

Please remember that you shouldn’t expect your child to read this alone. Read it to or with them. Discuss the pictures, enjoy the story, predict what might happen next, use different voices for the characters, explore the facts in a non-fiction book. The main thing is that you have fun!

Follow the link below for handy videos and resources you can use too!

Phonics and early reading policy

What does a reader look like at Margaret Wix Primary School? 

• Excellent phonic knowledge and skills.
• Fluency and accuracy in reading across a wide range of contexts throughout the curriculum.
• Knowledge of an extensive and rich vocabulary.
• An excellent comprehension of texts.
• The motivation to read for both study and for pleasure.
• Extensive knowledge through having read a rich and varied range of texts.

Intent – why are we teaching this?

Phonics (reading and spelling)

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

We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception 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. As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. Where necessary, we make suitable adaptations to ensure that children are challenged and supported throughout the programme. 
 

At Margaret Wix, we also model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

Comprehension

At Margaret Wix we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose. Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

Implementation – how are we teaching this?

Foundations for phonics in Nursery

We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include:

•  sharing high-quality stories and poems
•  learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
•  activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
•  attention to high-quality language.

We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10- minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.

Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.

Currently (Spring 1 2022), daily streamed phonics is completed every day in year 1 and 2, with children mastering beginning our essential spelling programme. Groups are assessed and children are moved on a regular basis to maximise children’s progress and attainment. Every area that is dedicated to phonics has the correct resources to support children’s learning.

Margaret Wix’s expectations of progress:

•  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.

Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

Any child who needs additional practice has Keep-up support, taught by a fully 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.

We timetable phonics ‘Keep Up lessons’ for any child in Year 2 or 3 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Comprehensive, half termly assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace.

If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we plan phonics ‘Keep-up’ lessons to address specific reading/writing gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least two times a week.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week

In early years and year one, 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, 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 o
• comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

In Reception, these sessions start approximately in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.

From Year two onwards, we continue to support reading in this way through targeted intervention for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

Home reading

The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.

• Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.
• We use a wealth of resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.
• Each of our books from our reading scheme (including those that are phonetically decodable), has questions to support parents at home when discussing what children have read. 
• Our website offers videos on how to question your child at home and how to model the correct pronunciation of letters and sounds. 
• Each class page has supportive materials for effectively questioning our children on what they have read 

Additional reading support for vulnerable children

Children from across the school, who are receiving additional phonics Keep-up sessions, read their reading practice book to an adult daily.

Ensuring consistency and pace of progress

Every teacher in our school has been trained to teach reading, so we have the same expectations of progress. We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load.

Weekly content grids map each element of new learning to each day, week and term for the duration of the programme.

Lesson templates, Prompt cards and How to videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.

The Reading Leader and SLT use the Audit and Prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

Ensuring reading for pleasure

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002) ‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

• We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at Margaret Wix and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures. 
• Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
• Every day, each class reads quietly for ten minutes. During this time, children are posed with a  different question each week E.G 'If you could be any character from a story, who would you be?' During this time, children can respond to this question, prompting them to think about the stories they have read. These questions allow the class to have rich discussions about texts they have read.
• In Nursery/Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.
• Children from Nursery/Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school and the adults will write in this on a regular basis to ensure communication between home and school.
• The school library is made available for classes to use at protected times. Every class has a half an hour slot weekly. During this time, children are read to, encouraged to explore new stories and reccommend books to their peers.
• Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of Reading for Pleasure events (book fairs, author visits and workshops, national events, secret reader etc).
• Children take part in our Give Me Ten reading initiative, which promotes reading for pleasure for ten minutes each day at home. New starters and yearly, parents are sent a letter to outline how the scheme works. Children receive awards, that are book related, when they reach milestones for reading.
• Parents/Carers are invited to attend early morning library club on a Friday to share stories with their children. 
• There are reading ambassadors in every class that get involved in raising the profile of reading across the school through book corner competitions, attending early morning reading events, sharing reading with each other, developing the library etc.

Impact – what is the effect on the pupils?

Assessment

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

Assessment for learning is used:

•  daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support
•  weekly in the review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

Summative assessment is used:

• every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
•  by SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

Statutory assessment

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2. 5

Ongoing assessment 

Children in Year 2 to 6 are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments where appropriate. Children’s progress through our reading scheme is tracked formally half termly and targeted provision is put into place for those that need to catch up. 

Aspirations For The Future

Pupils develop an understanding of how subjects and specific skills are linked to future jobs.

Here are some of the jobs you could aspire to do in the future as a Reader and Writer:

• Publicity Assistant
• Stage Director
• Song Writer
• Entertainment Manager
• Social Media Consultant
• Cartoonist
• Author
• Journalist
• Teacher
• Solicitor
• Barrister