Intent
Phonics (reading and spelling)
At Tibshelf Infant and Nursery 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 and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching the Foundations for phonics in Nursery and formal phonics lessons 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.
At Tibshelf Infant and Nursery School, we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, we aim for them to be reading 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.
Information for parents
The resources on this page https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ will 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.
Implementation
At Tibshelf Infant and Nursery school we believe that children’s reading journey starts well before formal phonics lessons are introduced. We have developed a ‘pre-phonics progression of skills’ plan which incorporates playful, purposeful activities that are carefully planned and sequenced to ensure that the children have knowledge and skills to give them the best possible start to reading.
Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1
We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 15-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.
Regular keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read
Any child who needs additional practice has regular 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 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics screening check.
Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week
We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. 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.
The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
Reading Fluency in Year 2
In Year 2 children are ready to exit the main phonics programme when they have read phase 5 set 5 books for at least 5 weeks and have read the final fluency assessment at 60–70+ words per minute. At this point children move onto the Little Wandle Fluency programme.
The children read a book with a fully trained practitioner three times a week over two weeks. Each Fluency reading lesson focuses on one chapter of the book and takes 25–30 minutes. The structure of every lesson is the same and the children take home their book after they have read it in school.
Impact
Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.
All children on phonics are every assessed every six weeks to check progress, identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, identify any children needing additional support and to plan the keep-up support that they need.
Phonics screening check
The phonics screening check is an informal test that children will need to complete at the end of year 1. During the test, which is designed to test their ability to decode words using their phonics knowledge, children will be required to read a mixture of 40 real and nonsense words.
