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Phonics and Reading
Phonics (reading and spelling)
At Durrington All Saints CofE Infant 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 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 Durrington, 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.
At Durrington, 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 an Early Reading lead, who drives the early reading programme in our school. The Early Reading lead monitors and supports our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.
Daily phonics lessons in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
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.
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 will consolidate and ensure they are all confident – no child left behind –
reading and spelling using all Phase GPCs.
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 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.
Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week
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.
* 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 4. 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. In Year 2, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.
Reading in writing lessons
As well as teaching children the key skills of decoding and fluency, we develop their pleasure in reading, motivation to read, understanding, and oracy during writing lessons.
High-quality books are used as stimulus for writing. Pupils explore the story with their teacher multiple times, and discuss the plot, characters, and ideas in the stories, before using the texts as a starting point to imitate or innovate in their own writing. They predict, express opinions, retell stories and poems, and develop language comprehension, being able to confidently answer questions about the text in discussion with the teacher.
Home reading
The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family. Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.
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.
Reading for Pleasure:
The school library and class libraries have been updated to ensure that pupils have access to a range of relevant, diverse and engaging texts. Pupils access the central library weekly to choose books to share at home. Opportunities for independent reading are given to the children: this includes continuous provision.
Story time happens every day in every class, to ensure the children are read to daily and share, discuss and enjoy the endless possibilities of books. The choice of text is shared with pupils, who often vote for which book they want to hear.​
Children also enjoy our reading challenges, which celebrate both reading and responding to the recommended reads and a wider choice of texts. Each class has a class teddy which pupils take home and read to, then create a page in the class floor book to share their thoughts about the books they have read, with photos of the teddy enjoying the books too.
Durrington's Recommended Reads for EYFS
Durrington's Recommended Reads for Year 1
Durrington's Recommended Reads for Year 2
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, mantras, 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.
Assessment
The Reading Leader regularly monitors and observes teaching and summative data is used to monitor progress and identify children with gaps in their learning, who need additional support.
Assessment for learning is used daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support and 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. This assessment data is also used by SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, 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.
Ongoing assessment for catch-up
Children in Year 2 are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.
Supporting with Phonics at Home
The Little Wandle website has a number of great resources to support you at home. Firstly, it shows how we pronounce the pure sounds and a video of how to read the decodable book with your child at home under the 'books coming home' tab. Please discuss further with your child's class teacher if you have any questions.
