Reading & Phonics

Phonics and Early Reading

At Ox Close Primary School we are passionate about and dedicated to ensuring all children become confident and enthusiastic readers and writers.  This in turn leads children to be equipped for becoming life-long learners ensuring that our school motto of ‘Be The Best You Can Be’ carries on with them after they leave Ox Close.  We believe that phonics provides the foundations of learning to make the development into fluent reading and writing easier.  Communication, Language and Literacy is a key area of focus across school – a sound foundation in a child’s phonological awareness will stand all children in good stead for their future development in CLL. Through phonics sessions children learn to segment words to support their spelling ability and blend sounds to read words. The teaching of phonics is of high priority from the very beginning of each child’s primary school career.

At Ox Close we use the Department of Education approved Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme in Reception and Key Stage 1 for the teaching of phonics and we continue the use of the relevant resources throughout the rest of the school including intervention materials for those children who require it. This programme allows our phonics teaching and learning to be progressive – children come into Reception consolidating their previous Early Years education, building upon their listening skills and are then introduced to phonemes and graphemes which marks the start of systematic phonics work.

Children have discrete, daily phonics sessions where they review previous learning, are taught new graphemes and phonemes, practise together and apply what they have learned. Through the teaching of systematic phonics, our aim is for children to become fluent and confident readers by the end of Key Stage 1. This enables the children to focus on developing fluency and comprehension throughout the remainder of their time in school. A child’s attainment in phonics is measured by the Phonics Screening Test at the end of Year 1 or the retake Phonics Screening in Year 2 if unsuccessful at Year 1. Children who do not have success in the screening by the end of Year 2 continue to be supported by direct phonics teaching in Key Stage 2.

Daily Phonics Lessons – Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised

When children are in Reception they begin to learn their letter sounds (phonemes) and the written letters which represent them (graphemes). In addition, children will learn to blend sounds together to read a word, to listen to a word and to recognise which sounds are used to make it. This is called blending and segmenting.

Not all words can be sounded out using phonics and these are called ‘tricky words.’ Children learn to recognise and sight read these ‘tricky words’ by identifying which part of the word is the tricky part.

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: teaching begins early in 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. Children are assessed every half term and those children who have gaps in knowledge or are not making expected progress are identified to take part in these keep-up sessions.

• 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.
• If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading we teach phonics ‘Rapid Catch-Up’ lessons to specifically address these gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place up to 4 times per week.

Helping Your Child With Reading

The following Little Wandle documents are available for you to see the types of materials, and the progression of the programme that we are using in school. There is also a parent section of the Little Wandle website which you can access by following this link:

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Little Wandle Programme Overview

Programme-Overview_Reception-and-Year-1-1

Phase 2 and 3 graphemes

Grapheme Mat Phase 2 and 3

Phase 2

Phase 2 information sheet 2

Phase 3

Phase 3 information sheet

Phase 5

Phase 5 information sheet

Additional Blending Practice

Additional_Blending_Word_Cards_Phase_4

Additional_Blending_Word_Cards_Phase_3

Additional_Blending_Word_Cards_Phase_2

Home Reading

The Little Wandle books that your child is reading in school are assigned weekly to their Collins online E-library. The library can be accessed by following this link and using the log in details that have been sent home.

https://ebooks.collinsopenpage.com/

Key Stage 2 Reading

As our children progress into Key Stage 2 as fluent and confident readers, they begin to develop a deeper comprehension of the material studied, though a range of whole class and small group work as part of their English lessons.

(Years 3, 4 and 5) Accelerated Reader – This reading programme uses an online platform that can be accessed independently by our students. Once they have read their choice of library book, they complete a short quiz to assess their understanding of the text. The scores generated from these assessments inform their reading level and direct them when selecting their next book. Children are encouraged to select from a wide range of genres within our well-stocked library and to share these books with their families at home.

(Year 6) Reading Plus – This recent addition to our school utilises an online library of texts, covering a wide range of topics and genres, which are targeted towards the interests of each individual. After an initial assessment, suggested reads are made and the programme tracks eye speed to ensure the steady development of reading speed and fluency. Follow-up comprehension questions and vocabulary activities work alongside this to deepen our understanding of the text and prepare our students for their SATs examinations. Children also have access to our school library to select a home-reading book where needed.

Guided Reading – Our children also take part in Guided Reading sessions, which are given dedicated time to complete within our English lessons. Small group work with the teacher allows for discussions around a short shared text, as well as further reinforcement of the comprehension techniques identified through their work on Accelerated Reader. At Ox Close, we use VIPERS to support these activities, allowing the pupils to cover a range of skills in their reading including inference, retrieval and prediction.

Lexia – For any students who need further support in specific areas of reading, our Lexia programme provides regular, short-burst sessions that focus on  sound and spelling patterns that may be more difficult to recognise.