Phonics and Reading in Early Years and Key Stage 1

At Holy Family, it is our priority to ensure that each child is taught to read. Phonics is the way that our children start their journey to become independent and fluent readers. Children who read regularly or are read to regularly have the opportunity to open the doors to so many different worlds! More importantly, reading will give your child the tools to become independent life-long learners.

Phonics:

At this school, we follow Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme, to develop our children’s phonics. Phonics is taught daily across our Reception and KS1 classes to encourage children to learn to read with confidence and fluency. It is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of background. Our intention is that all children will learn to read fluently by the age of six; however, some children in lower Key Stage 2 will continue this programme when appropriate.

We start teaching phonics in 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.

Please click the link for more information for parents from Little Wandle.

For parents | Letters and Sounds

Daily Phonics:

At Holy Family, we value reading as a crucial life skill for every child. Therefore, we have a highly skilled Phonics Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. They support and monitor the reading team to ensure that all staff teach with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

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 the Autumn term. 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 Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence (GPC), and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
• Children in Y1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPC with fluency and accuracy. Any child who needs additional practice has regular ‘Catch up’ support, taught by a fully trained adult. ‘Phonics Catch-up sessions’ match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and strategies, but use smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.
• Phonics lessons continue in Year 2, when they do phase 5 review then move onto Bridge to Spelling, which teaches foundational skills for spelling. Through the year, Year 2 complete the spelling units to build confidence in spelling. Year 2, also progress onto the Little Wandle fluency chapter books.

We timetable phonics lessons for any child in Y2 or Y3 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not reached the expected standard in the Phonics Screening Check. For this, we use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach these using Little Wandle Catch-up resources.

Assessment:

The Phonics Leader in school is responsible for ensuring that all children make the expected progress in their journey of learning to read. At the end of each half term, the children completes a short Phonics assessment which ensures each child is making progress and allows for any identification of gaps or extra support needed.

Phonics Screening Check:

During the summer term in Year 1, children nationwide are tested on their phonic knowledge. The purpose of the screening check is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. Children who do not meet the required standard for the check in Y1, enter again in Y2 with additional support. Parents are informed as to whether their child has achieved the national expectation within the child’s end-of-year report.

Reading:

• Reading practice sessions three times a week. We teach children to read through reading practice sessions. 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 Each reading practice session has a clear focus. 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.

In Reception, 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.

Home reading:

The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family. Children are also encouraged to read and share books for pleasure.

Phonics Workshops:

Each year, we offer Phonics workshops for parents. These are opportunities for us to share our approach to phonics with parents and offer guidance and suggestions of how parents can support their child’s reading journey at home. We encourage parents to speak to their child’s class teacher if they have any questions about how best to support their child with their phonics.