Early Reading and Phonics at Grappenhall Heys
At Grappenhall Heys Primary, we work to ensure all our children become fluent in reading and writing. We teach reading through a systematic synthetic phonics programme of teaching using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised
Phonics in Nursery
Our pupils start their phonics journey in our Nursery setting.
Our pupils begin to develop their speaking and listening skills which are rooted in the curriculum area of Communication and Language, one of the Prime Areas of EYFS. We encourage and support our learners to respond to sounds, play with sounds, songs and rhymes, listen to others, understand and ask questions and to develop a conceptual understanding of language relevant to their place in the world, for example through prepositions such as 'on top' or 'under'. Our staff sing with our pupils everyday. They engage in stories and share rhymes to develop children's communication and language. This oracy is enhanced through actions that are created with the children to help develop children’s balance, co-ordination, body awareness and rhyme.
Nursery children will have a 10 minute daily focused phonics session working within Phase 1 developing vital skills such as alliteration, rhyme, oral blending and segmenting.
Phonics and Reading in Reception
Children begin by learning the sound made by each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Once learnt, they then move on to learn the sound made by groups of two or three letters.
Alongside this knowledge, our pupils rehearse skills of recognising, hearing and saying these sounds in isolation in order to blend them in sequence to make a word. With this pivotal reading skill mastered, all our children are able to decode and read words with growing independence. Shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the daily phonics lesson, models fluency and promotes automaticity. Children are guided to use punctuation to build expression and intonation as they read.
Our school curriculum has a strong focus on language development for all our children because we recognise that the acquisition of language, through speaking and listening to one another, develops crucial skills needed for reading and writing across the whole curriculum.
Teaching Phonics in Reception and Year 1
Children make a rapid start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons with additional daily oral blending games, to a full-length lesson, as quickly as possible. A segment of daily review supports a Friday 'Review Lesson' which consolidates the week’s teaching to help newly acquired sounds and words to 'stick' in our pupils long term memory.
Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 letters and sounds (GPCs) and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4).
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.
In the Summer term of Year 1, our pupils are assessed in-line with the Government's statutory Phonic screening check. This assessment confirms that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. Individual children’s results will be made available to parents, so that parents are kept informed about their child’s progress in developing word-reading skills.
Phonics for Reading
We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week. These sessions are delivered by a fully-trained adult to small groups of children. The books we use match the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Assessments. Book reading 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 1, we start teaching reading practice sessions in Autumn 1. In Year 2 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books. The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
Phonics and Reading Comprehension
We want all of our pupils to become 'fluent' readers who love books. We teach so that their recall of taught sounds is effective and efficient in speed and automaticity. We teach and model reading to ensure all pupils read with appropriate pace that does not compromise accuracy.
Expression and intonation are part of our taught reading skills. We understand that the rate and level of a child's reading fluency is not always a constant and very much depends on what they are reading. Consequently, our reading scheme is embedded in our phonics teaching and exposes pupils to a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts to extend and enhance reading for meaning.
From Nursery onwards, our pupils visit our school library weekly. They are guided to choose a reading book to borrow and take home to share with their families. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.
Supportive and Adaptive Teaching
Whilst still undergoing teaching of the systematic synthetic phonics programme, any child who needs additional practice, within EYFS or Year 1, 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. These children will then receive additional support to ensure they can improve their decoding skills.
The aforementioned screening check assists teacher assessment in identifying children who have not learned to decode using Phase 5 phonics by the end of Year 1.
Any child beyond EYFS and Year 1 who has not reached the required skills to read with fluency urgently needs to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least three times a week. This support continues as needed into KS2.
Phonics in Year 2
Our curriculum reading offer ensures that the essential foundations that are embedded in EYFS and Year One continue to become part of the Year 2 reading diet.
We continue to closely monitor and assess any pupil who does not secure a 'pass' at the Year One Phonic Screening. Careful analysis of gaps in phonemic knowledge and awareness then enables class teachers to create bespoke planning to ensure that a pupil can access the Phonic Screening when they are in Year 2 and secure a pass.
Click here for a Little Wandle guide for parents.