Phonics and Reading
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go.” – Dr Seuss
Intent
At Sandilands, we believe that the teaching of reading is integral to a child’s understanding and appreciation of the world around them; a platform that allows our children to see beyond what they know, share in cultural experiences, and develop the vocabulary they need to effectively express themselves. Our reading curriculum strives to foster a lifelong love of reading. We cultivate the behaviours that they will need to be discerning readers as they read frequently and widely and discuss what they read. This curriculum is delivered through Little Wandle’s synthetic phonics, a linked approach to shared and guided reading, home reading, reading across the curriculum, regular opportunities for independent reading, and hearing quality texts read aloud every day. All of these are essential components as they offer the range of opportunities needed to develop fluent, enthusiastic, and critical readers.
It is important that children are motivated to read at home regularly; when their reading opportunities increase, so does their fluency and stamina, which in turn increases their enjoyment of reading. Therefore, the link between children’s motivation to read and reading for pleasure is reciprocal. Furthermore, we know that reading pleasure is beneficial not only for reading outcomes but for wider learning enjoyment and mental wellbeing. Thus, we work hard to foster a love of independent reading and build communities of engaged readers. We understand the significance of parents and carers in supporting their children to develop both word reading and comprehension skills, so we endeavour to build a home-school partnership which enables parents and carers to have the confidence to support their children with reading at home. Reading is at the very heart of our curriculum. We are committed to promoting a love for reading and not only giving children opportunities to read in English lessons, but in the wider curriculum too.
Our aims for reading are to:
- Instil children with a love of reading that lasts for their lifetime, share with them an enthusiasm for children’s literature, and help children to recognise the value of reading as a life skill.
- Encourage children to become enthusiastic and reflective readers by introducing them to good quality books, from a variety of cultures and in a range of different styles and formats.
- Develop our children’s understanding of a variety of text types including non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and drama.
- Develop children’s confidence, fluency, and independence when reading for different purposes.
- Develop children’s abilities to reflect on and have an interest in what they have read and the language and punctuation choices made by the author.
- Use drama and role-play, where appropriate, to immerse children in the text.
- Ensure our children have sound phonic awareness and use a phonics-first approach to reading.
- To read widely across the curriculum.
Implementation
From the start of Nursery at Sandilands Primary, children are immersed in an all-encompassing literary environment. The focus is on the prime areas firstly, developing children’s personal social and emotional development, physical development and communication, language and literacy.
How do we teach Phonics?
At Sandilands Primary school we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds phonics scheme from Nursery up to Year 2 and for those children in Key Stage 2 who still require it. Little Wandle supports the systematic and synthetic teaching of phonics to support children in the process of learning to read and write. As their phonic knowledge progresses, children will move from learning letters and the sounds that they make, to reading words and simple captions, to reading short books and writing sentences. Little Wandle gives the children the opportunity to use and apply their phonic learning through regular practice which aims to improve children’s reading fluency.
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 once children are settled in their new class. We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised 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. Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read
Any child who needs additional practice has daily 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 daily phonics 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 Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised 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 ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading/writing gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least three times a week.
Shared Reading in KS2
To reach the higher standards at the end of Key Stage Two in reading, research has shown that an effective method for teaching children to learn how to comprehend texts is ‘Shared reading’. Many schools using this strategy have seen a massive impact on their reading results. We believed that this strategy would be beneficial to our children. We use this in conjunction with the One Education ‘Reading Gems’ which link to the content domains of The National Curriculum. Teachers use the content domains and question stems to plan engaging sessions that allow children to develop both their reading fluency and their comprehension skills.
At Sandilands, Shared Reading is taught for 30-45 minutes daily. This gives children the opportunity to develop a passion and enthusiasm for books alongside developing the skills required to master all of the content domains in the National Curriculum. It is important that we, as teachers, have a good knowledge of literature not only to ensure that pupils meet the demands of the curriculum, but also to support them in their choice of books, guide them in discussion about authors and to create a buzz and excitement about reading. Our shared reading texts have been carefully chosen to ensure children receive a breadth of reading books which are age-appropriate, challenging, engaging, high-quality and, ideally, include diverse characters from a range of cultures, backgrounds, abilities and family circumstances. Shared reading texts are reviewed and adapted each year to incorporate new texts, differing cohort needs and teacher preferences.
Throughout each shared reading lesson, questions and discussion points are centred around One Education’s ‘Reading Gems’. These are a child-friendly way of introducing children to the different content domains used at the end of Key Stage 2 testing. Using these reading gems ensures that children develop a range of comprehension skills in order to become highly-functioning readers and achieve well at the end of Key Stage 2.
Each shared reading lesson is split into four sections: Vocabulary practice (5 minutes), extended reading (10 minutes), quickfire retrieval (5 minutes) and a reading gem focus (10-15 minutes).
Impact
In order to measure the impact of the teaching of reading at Sandilands we use a variety of assessment methods.
Phonics Assessments
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.
- Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.
Reading Assessments
Children are assessed using a variety of summative methods including
- Benchmarking
- NFER reading papers three times a year
- Year 6 SATS
In addition, evidence from Shared Reading sessions is used by teachers to formatively assess children in order to identify gaps and plan subsequent lessons.
Parents will be provided with a written report about their child’s progress during the Summer term every year.
Phonics Screening Check Support
Please Click here for the Parents Meeting Power Point
Please Click here for example assessments
Please Click here for example assessments
Please Click here for example assessments
Please Click here for example assessments
Please Click here for example assessments
Please Click here for guidance
Click below to see our Reading for Pleasure Spine!
Little Wandle parent support
Little Wandle programme progression: Reception and Year 1 overviews - click here
Parent guide for accessing Big Cat Collins books at home
Click here for the Little Wandle Glossary.
Little Wandle Reception and Year 1 Programme overview - click here to download
Pronunciation and letter formation parent support - Autumn 1
Pronunciation and letter formation parent support - Autumn 2
Follow this link to the Little Wandle website for 'How to' videos for supporting at home.