Phonics and Reading

Reading and Phonics

Intent

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

As children move beyond the Early Reading curriculum, reading remains a high priority across the school where a love of reading is encouraged and fluency, prosody and comprehension continue to be taught.

Comprehension

At Swanland School, 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.

Comprehension skills are taught throughout the school. Texts are carefully selected to ensure that it is suitable for the children’s reading ability. Reading skills are taught through discussions and tasks designed by the teacher.

Book talk occurs in each classroom, appropriate to the year group. The focus is on developing skills and fostering a love to reading, rather than asking the child to record their answer in their books.

All children are encouraged to read for pleasure. Children from Year 2 upwards, are independently allowed to access the library and choose a book they can read independently or with an adult at home.

Implementation

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 3 of 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 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.
• Children in Year 2 review Phase 5, then progress with a ‘Bridge to spelling’

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

• Any child who needs additional practice has support to help them, taught by a fully trained adult.
• 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.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week in Foundation Stage and Year 1

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 on pages 11–20 of ‘Application of phonics to reading’
• 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
• comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.
• In Reception these sessions start in Week 3. 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.
• We continue to teach reading in this way for any children, through the school, who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

Comprehension Skills

As the children move beyond early reading, reading remains a high priority at Swanland School. Comprehension skills are taught explicitly in all classes, through comprehension lessons where  a range of reading skills, appropriate to the text, are a focus of each session. High quality texts, with ambitious vocabulary are chosen in order to develop children’s comprehension skills. This is carefully mapped through the school. See here the books we focus on in each Year group. 

Home reading

• For the children in Reception in Year 1 and children in older classes who continue to access the Little Wandle scheme, the decodable reading practice book is taken home in the form of an ebook, to ensure success is shared with the family.
• For children who are able to fully decode all sounds, an appropriate book is sent home for children to practise their reading.

• Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children from Reception upwards.
• We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ 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.

Additional reading support for vulnerable children

• Children in Reception and Year 1 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)

‘Teachers need to ensure that all pupils can read at a speed that allows them to enjoy and understand the books they want to read for themselves.  Emotional engagement makes a key contribution to pupils’ development as readers’ (The Reading Framework 2023 DofE)

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 from Reception to Year 6. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at our school and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
• Every classroom has access to an inviting book area or display that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
• In Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.
• Children from 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.
• As the children progress through the school, they are encouraged to write their own comments and keep a list of the books/authors that they have read.
• We hold a range of incentives to encourage reading a wide variety of books such as reading challenges. This is changed at Intervals to ensure enthusiasm for the incentives stays high.

Impact

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 for pupils accessing Little Wandle, 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 the Reception and Year 1 team, who moderate together to ensure they are diagnostic in their assessment analysis.  This analysis is used 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.
• Statutory assessment take place in Year 6.

Ongoing assessment for catch-up

• Children in Year 2 to 6 who still access Little Wandle, are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.
• In reading lessons from Year 2 upwards, teachers undertake summative and formative assessments to inform future planning. Termly comprehension assessments are undertaken from Year 2 to Year 6.

Please see our Literacy Progressive Curriculum Documents here.

And an overview of the texts the children at our school will encounter and share can be found here.

If you would like to find out further information to support your child through the Little Wandle process please access their support page for parents.