Intent

At More Park, 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 More Park, 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.

Implementation

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

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 with teaching beginning 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.

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

Any child who needs additional practice has daily Keep-up support. 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 or 3 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.  If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address these specific reading/writing gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least three times a week. Once there aren't any gaps in phonic knowledge anyone struggling with reading will have 1:1 Building Reading Power (BRP) sessions, three times a week to ensure any issues can be identified and support and instruction given.

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.  Books used are matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids. All children 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 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practice reading with decodable books.

Home reading

The decodable reading practice book is sent home as an E-book to ensure success is shared with the family.  Another decodable book at the same level will also be sent home each week. We also send home a reading for pleasure book for parents to share and read to their child.  We use the Little Wandle 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. Please click on the following link to find out more. https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Additional reading support for vulnerable children

Children in Reception and Year 1 who are receiving additional phonics keep-up sessions read their reading practice book to an adult daily.

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, 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.

Ensuring reading for pleasure

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.  We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at More Park and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.

Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books. 

In Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed. Children from Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school and the adults will write in this on a regular basis to ensure communication between home and school.

Impact

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.  Assessment for learning is used daily within class to identify children needing keep-up support.  Weekly, in the "Review" lesson we 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.

In Year One all children sit the statutory Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing this check re-sits it in Year Two.