Swaffield School

Early Reading

Intent

Phonics (reading and spelling)

At Swaffield Primary School, 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 synthetic phonics programme.

We start teaching Little Wandle Foundations in our Nursery and then, from Reception, we 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. 

Implementation

Foundations for Phonics in Nursery

  • We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.
  • We believe that the priority in Nursery should be to build the foundations for phonics for all children.

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 full-length lessons as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
  • 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 Phases 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

  • Any child in Reception and Year 1 who needs additional practice has Daily Keep-up support and is taught by a fully trained adult.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week

  • We teach reading practice sessions three times a week.
  • In Reception, these sessions start in week 4 of teaching at the latest. Initially, children will read wordless books. In these sessions, children review GPCs and are taught blending using teacher-led blending. Once children can blend, they progress onto decodable books matched to their secure phonic knowledge.
  • Children read each book three times to develop phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension as well as book behaviours.

Daily phonics and spelling in Year 2

  • Year 2 begins by using assessment to ensure that children have completed the Little Wandle Year 1 progression. Any gaps in teaching are addressed through daily phonics lessons until the programme is completed. Corresponding summative assessments are carried out to ensure this content is secure.
  • Once all Year 1 content has been taught and assessed, we teach a five-week Phase 5 review. This ensures that children secure the trickier elements of Phase 5 and can apply this alphabetic knowledge in both reading and spelling.

Reading for pleasure – Early Years and KS1

Alongside daily teaching of phonics, reading for pleasure is an important part of our Early Reading offer. We ensure children develop a love of reading and are exposed to a range of interesting and relevant authors. We promote a love of reading in the following ways:

  • Teaching of poetry, which includes performing and learning a range of poems by heart.
  • Daily storytime.
  • Book areas within the classroom which have a careful selection of books, including books by the focus author.
  • Use of Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised ‘Foundations for a Love of reading’ stories in nursery.

Alongside children’s decodable reading book, children also take home a reading for pleasure book each week. In each year group, children will take home a range of book by authors, including some which they have read in class.

Impact

Our Phonics and Early reading curriculum will ensure all pupils develop the skills that the need to become confident readers and writers, as well as developing a pleasure for reading. We use assessments and learning walks to measure and monitor the impact of the Early Reading curriculum on pupils.

Information for Parents:

This link to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds has lots of resources to help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters.

There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home. 

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

Key Vocabulary in Phonics

Phoneme – smallest unit of sound e.g j o g

Grapheme – written symbol and the letters

Blending (supports reading) – putting sounds together / start with oral blending – robot hands

Segmenting (supports with writing) - splitting sounds e.g h-o-p, ch-i-p

 

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