Phonics
At Iceni – Hockwold we value reading as a vital life skill and we are dedicated to enabling our children to become lifelong readers. We view everything as an opportunity to read throughout all areas of the curriculum. The aim of the phonics curriculum is to teach children to read quickly and skilfully and provide them with reading and writing skills to access other curriculum areas. The systematic teaching of phonics has a high priority throughout Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage One. We acknowledge that children need to be taught the key skills in segmenting and blending to be equipped with the knowledge to be able to complete the phonics check at the end of Year One. We also value and encourage the pupils to read for enjoyment and recognise that this starts with the foundations of acquiring letter sounds, segmenting and blending skills.
At Iceni – Hockwold we teach phonics and early reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Programme, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. Children in Early Years Foundation Stage and Year 1 are taught during daily phonics lessons.
We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Programme 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 Phases 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.
Any child who needs additional practice has daily Keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult to ensure that every child learns to read. 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.
Reading Books: At Iceni – Hockwold children read a decodable book to match their phonic knowledge until they no longer need phonics teaching.
Reading sessions are broken down into three parts:
- Decoding
- Prosody
- Comprehension
In Early Years Foundation Stage and Year 1 decodable reading books are taken home to share with the family once children have read them in school. They also choose a sharing book to take home to read and share for pleasure. Children can change their sharing books as often as they wish. Children who need phonic teaching in Year 2 and above read their decodable book with a trained adult and chose a book from the Readasaurus level on the BEAR project. Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent readers by the end of Key Stage One. Attainment in phonics is measured using the Phonics Screening Check at the end of Year 1. Any children who do not pass the Phonics Screening Test in Year 1 resit at the end of Year 2.
Attainment and progress is also measured regularly using the Little Wandle assessments; these are carried out every 6 weeks to ensure that we quickly identify any child needing additional support using the keep up and catch up programs in Early Years Foundation Stage and Year 1 or the Rapid Catch Up programs for Year 2 and above.
In the summer term the phonics teacher led learning will equate to one hour per day, although split into more than one session, as insisted by the Government in their document ‘The Reading Framework’ We ensure that children learn the correct letter formation in their learning as well as correct pronunciation of the sounds. Children in reception do not learn to join as we agree with the EEF and Bold Beginnings document that stated learning joined hand writing can slow down the ability to write.
Early Reading
In our academy, we have been training and trialling strategies, concepts and ideas from Jane Considine – an Education Consultant whose courses such as The Write Stuff and Hooked on Books have inspired the way we teach writing and reading. One thing we have been focusing on is the consistent use of technical vocabulary associated with the explicit teaching of reading skills and how this will benefit each child as they journey through our school.
In EYFS, the ‘Fantastic Foundations’ are based on three guiding principles: the understanding of the uniqueness of each child, nurturing deep talk and developing listening and providing a rich repertoire of real and imagined experiences to ignite writing. In addition, Jane Considine’s EYFS Rainbow promotes talking and writing about children’s knowledge of the world.
Once in Year 1, the KS1 Reading Rainbow continues, focusing on three layers with visual representations as symbols which remain consistent throughout the primary phase.
The three layers of the Reading Rainbow, from top to bottom, cover:
- The ideas of reading: FANTASTICs
- The understanding of reading: STYLISTICs
- The competencies of reading: ANALYTICs
Each layer contains 9 reading lenses and by using these lenses pupils become more confident explorers of a range of text types. This is taught during daily story time in EYFS to create a love of reading.
