Phonics and Early Reading
Our Reading leader is Miss Vardy.
Children make excellent progress with their reading because they read frequently, independently and with adults.
Classrooms and the reading garden are full of interesting books and other texts for pupils to enjoy. This inspires pupils to read. Pupils talk fondly of book talk and enjoy the challenges that new vocabulary brings.
Ofsted, July2022
At Eastrop Infant School we value reading as a crucial life skill so it is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of background.
We believe that all children can become fluent readers, read for pleasure and purpose.
We ensure our classrooms are language rich environments, supporting the children in learning and understanding new vocabulary.
Phonics
Synthetic Phonics is a way of teaching reading. Children are taught to read letters or groups of letters by saying the sound(s) they represent. Children can then start to read words by blending (synthesising) the sounds together to make a word.
At Eastrop Infant School we follow a systematic approach where each grapheme is introduced clearly; a focus is placed on blending to read and segmenting to spell. This focus provides children with the skills they need to begin to read words, captions and whole sentences as soon as possible. Our chosen validated phonics programme is Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.
How We Teach Phonics
- It Nursery our children are imersed in language.
- In Reception and Key Stage 1 phonics is taught daily and there is a review session on a Friday.
- In Reception, we ensure the children make a strong start and follow the progression within Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised program. At the beginning of the year, the focus is on daily oral blending moving on to blending with flashcards and then reading whole words on flashcards. We also focus on language development through high quality stories and rhymes.
- Reception lessons start at 10 minutes, with daily additional oral blending – increasing to 30 minutes as soon as possible.
- By the end of Reception, children will have been taught up to the end of Phase 4.
- In Year 1, children follow and continue the progression within Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.
- Y1 lessons are 30 minutes long.
- By the end of year 1, children will have been taught up to the end of Phase 5.
- In Year 2 phonic lessons are taught daily to children where appropriate – following the model of Little Wandle but plugging specific gaps identified through assessment.
- Year 2 children who have completed our phonic programme then they move on to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised spelling programme.
If you would like more information about how to support your child with phonics at home, please follow this link to find the Foundation, Reception and Year 1 overview as well as videos of the sound pronunciations, letter formation sheets and other helpful resources.
Reading
It is important for every child to develop a life-long enjoyment for books and reading.
We build upon the children’s interests and personalities to expose them to a wide variety of reading genres and authors. In each classroom there is a class book corner which contains a variety of high-quality texts consisting of fiction, non-fiction and poetry from a range of authors. Within our curriculum we ensure that there are many opportunities for children to apply their reading skills across all subjects. This is to make it more meaningful and relevant to the children.
At Eastrop Infant school we believe that every child will learn to read, regardless of their background, needs or abilities. Reading is taught and practised individually, in small groups or as a whole class. The children are exposed to a range of stimulating reading materials from their first days at school.
As outlined by the National Curriculum (2014) for KS1 there are two main concepts which underpin our teaching and learning for reading:
- Word Recognition – Where children decode unfamiliar words by segmenting and blending and recognising and reading High Frequency words and Common Exception Words accurately within a text.
- Reading Comprehension (listening and reading) – Children show their understanding of what they have read by retelling parts of the text, answering questions about the text and making predictions based on what they have read.
Through our teaching methods, we enhance and develop the children’s skills and strategies necessary to read confidently, fluently, accurately and with understanding.
Children practise applying reading skills using fully decodable books that are closely matched to their developing phonic level. We use Collins Big Cat phonics for Little Wandle texts as our group reading and home-school reading texts. The reading books are selected by the teacher and are closely matched to the phonics programme and are grouped accordingly.
Home Reading
All children are expected to read regularly at home, and the close partnership we have with our parents is vital to the process of learning to read. We encourage our children to read at home every day. Every child takes part in the ‘Eastrop Star Reading Challenge’ competition where children are rewarded with reading certificates for every 25 nights they have read. Certificates are awarded for every 25 reads.
Teachers change the children’s reading books once a week using their phonics assessments to determine which book they are sent home with. We believe that re-reading the same book throughout the week builds children’s reading fluency and understanding.
All children also take a book of their choice home each week to encourage reading for pleasure. The children choose books from the class book corners or our new garden library.
Whole Class Reading Aloud
All children will hear a wide variety of texts being read to them daily so they can apply storytelling skills within their reading. Every class has a dedicated whole class story time once a day for 20 minutes.
Leaders prioritise reading. From the moment children start in Nursery, there is an emphasis on developing their language skills and introducing early letter and sound recognition . Children encounter songs, rhymes and stories that widen and support their vocabulary development. Phonics teaching continues when children enter Reception. Books match the sounds children are learning.
Ofsted, July 2022
Recommend Books
Please note that the links below will take you to external content on websites owned and developed by other people.
Progression
We have created a progression document to show how the teaching of Reading changes and evolves from Nursery to the end of KS1 (ages 2-7)
Please click this link to see our Progression document for reading and phonics.