Reading at Iceni Academy, Hockwold
Intent
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 skillfully 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.
Implementation
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.
Where a child needs further support we use catch up support throughout our school, which is taught by a fully trained adult.
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.
Impact
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.
Attainment in reading is measured using the statutory assessments at the end of Key Stage One and Two. Teachers continually use formative assessments and we use NTS tests termly across KS1 and KS2 to identify gaps in learning.
Fluency Assessment is carried out when the children are on Phase 5 of the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Programme .
