Phonics and Reading

At Gearies Primary School we believe that reading underpins most life skills. For this reason, we strive to create a language rich environment all the way through the school. From Nursery to Year Six we expose children to high quality texts, promoting a love of reading early on. Our classroom environments support this philosophy. This begins with engaging and fast paced phonics lessons which engage them and build on children’s prior learning. Daily opportunities for story time, including poetry and singing, enable children to actively listen, participate, recite and consider the text on a deeper level.

Our phonics learning is supported by the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised scheme. Little Wandle is a systematic synthetic phonics programme which teaches skills in a set order to help children develop their understanding, confidence and an enthusiasm for reading.

1. Learning letter sounds
2. Learning letter formation
3. Blending sounds together to make words
4. Segmenting words (breaking them up into their separate sounds) 
5. Learning common exception words (otherwise known as tricky words) 

In Reception and Year One children have daily phonics lessons teaching letter sounds, accompanied by rhyme and pictorial support. A sound a day is taught with opportunities for the children to apply their learning in various multisensory, interactive, and practical contexts. Three times a week, children read with the teacher in a group, which encourages the children to practise their prosody and understanding of the text. Once children are beginning to blend sounds together, phased reading books matched to the children’s current learning needs are introduced. Phonics lessons initially begin short and repetitively as the children’s ability to concentrate develops. Steadily, this is built upon and includes activities within the environment for the children to apply their understanding.

Opportunities for ‘back and forth’ interactions with adults are explored frequently. Writing and phonics are woven into everyday learning opportunities and revisited. These opportunities help children to develop their listening skills and oracy skills by:

• thinking and modelling out loud
• rephrasing and extending what children say
• asking open and closed questions
• explaining why things happen
• making connections between past and present events
• providing models of accurate grammar

All pupils have a ‘recap and review’ session at the end each week and then assessed at appropriate intervals (half-termly) as they progress. During daily sessions of phonics there are also opportunities for practitioners and teachers to regularly assess children’s understanding. Frequent assessment is carried out to ensure that current books match children’s current phonics development. Regular monitoring and 1:1 reading with an adult also enable us to ensure that all children are making expected progress. Where this is not the case, additional support strategies are put into place.

In Year two, children’s reading and phonics journey continues. Children continue to learn and apply alternative sounds (ee,ea,ey,y) and their rules, spelling common exception words, spelling words with contractions, learning singular and possessive apostrophes and reading words with suffixes (-ment, -ness, -ful,-less and -ly).

In KS2, purposeful and specific interventions are put in place for those children who assessed to need additional support with their reading. These interventions link with, and follow on from, our Little Wandle systematic phonics scheme; further allowing children to build upon important already embedded learning.

Every Year One child in the Summer term will take a Phonics Screening Check. This is a phonics based check where children will be expected to read 40 simple, decodable words including nonsense words. This screening is used as a progress check to identify those children needing additional support with their reading. Results are reported to parents as well as the local authority. Children will be rechecked in Year Two if they do not reach the expected level.

Frequent assessment offers teachers opportunities to identify children with gaps in their understanding, this may include children joining us from other schools, those who have who have recently arrived from a different abroad, children with special educational needs or because they have missed or misunderstood a crucial phase of the systematic phonics teaching. Early intervention is imperative, additional resources can be used to support their personalised gaps in learning both in and out of class. This intervention may be class based or additional out of class support, either 1:1 or as part of a small group. Such support focuses on:

• developing a familiar routine in a quiet environment
• be led by a well-trained adult
• be consistent with the schools phonics programme
• tackle gaps in understanding

At Gearies Primary we believe that it is imperative that high expectations are maintained and personalised in order for all children to reach their full potential.