Reading and Phonics

Our beliefs 

At Airy Hill Primary School, we believe that all our children can become fluent readers. This is why reading is high priority across school and an integral part of our curriculum. We aim for every child to be a fluent reader by the end of Key Stage One.

We achieve this by:

• Following Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised SSP Programme.
• Creating comfortable, inviting reading environments throughout school.
• Starting phonics teaching in Nursery/Reception which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. 
• Delivering a high-quality phonics programme with fidelity so children can consistently use phonics to read and write confidently and fluently.
• Encouraging children to apply their phonics knowledge during reading and writing sessions and across the curriculum.
• To ensure children have fully decodable reading books that are tailored to their individual secure phonics knowledge.
• To encourage learners to be independent, resilient and have a stamina for reading.
• Fostering our children’s love for reading to create lifelong readers who see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.
• Having 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.

Phonics

Foundations for phonics in Nursery 

• We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the curriculum expectations for ‘Communication and language’ and ‘Literacy’. These include: 
• sharing high-quality stories and poems 
• learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
• activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
• attention to high-quality language.
• We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

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: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress.

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read 

• We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up and Catch-up resources – at pace.  
• Any child who needs additional practice 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.
• Any child in Year 2 and above who is not reading at the expected level for their age has rapid-catch up sessions. It mirrors the main phonics programme but has been created to help children catch up quickly, so has a faster pace. By the end of the Rapid Catch-up programme, children should be reading with enough fluency and accuracy to access the curriculum in class, and to read with enjoyment and understanding.   

Reading

Reception, Year 1 and Year 2

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 using books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge. These 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. 

Fluency

Pupils in Year 2 use Little Wandle Fluency books to develop their reading fluency. These follow a similar structure to other reading practice sessions that occur three times a week.

We love to read sessions – Nursery to Year 1

Each day, pupils take part in the Talk through Stories style programme. It is designed to extend and deepen children’s vocabulary so that they can understand the books they will soon be able to read for themselves. Time is not on their side. That is why it has been so important to plan specifically and systematically – step by step – to develop their vocabulary. Individual lesson plans are followed to ensure maximum progress is facilitated. 

Vocabulary exploring in these sessions are then used throughout the day by all adults in class.

Year 2 and beyond

VIPERS and reading activities are used to teach the 6 reading domains as part of the National Curriculum. These domains focus on the comprehension aspect of reading and not the mechanics (decoding, prosody and fluency).

Our structure is as follows:

Read 2-5 (depending on age/cohort) pages of the text each week. 

• Pre-teach tricky new vocabulary to allow all pupils to access the text.
• Reading time – this could be:

Teacher modelled reading 

Echo reading 

Paired reading  

Individual or small group reading 

• Reading activity – Find it or speed read
• Comprehension
• Day 1 – Initial thoughts
• Day 2 – retrieval/summary discussion activity
• Day 3 – vocabulary discussion activity
• Day 4 – inference discussion activity
• Day 5 – VIPER comprehension questions worksheet

Recording – children are encouraged to orally talk throughout the week. Discussion and whiteboard activities will develop pupils understanding of the text. On Friday’s, pupils complete a worksheet.

We value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose. 

Home Reading

• Parents are helped to know how best to support children in learning sounds through our phonics workshops.
• Reading at home is strongly promoted.  Teachers ensure that children understand how to work appropriately with decodable books and with shared texts.
• Reading is our only homework expectation.
• Decodable reading books are sent home at the end of the week to read at home with their families.
• Children choose a ‘Reading for pleasure’ sharing book from our school library for parents to share and read to their child.
• We have recently revamped our KS2 library to ensure a broad and exciting selection of new and classic texts.

Here are some videos to help with pronouncing sounds at home.

Please download our reading brochure below; designed for parents and families to find out more about Reading across school.