At SoutIhmead Primary School, we are passionate about our children becoming confident and enthusiastic 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 Nursery/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 Southmead Primary School, 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.

At Southmead Primary School, 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.

The systematic teaching of phonics has a high priority throughout the Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and throughout Key Stage 2, according to need.  In phonics lessons we teach children that the letters of the alphabet represent a different sound; that these can be used in a variety of ways and are put together to make words. We use the Department of Education validated phonics scheme – ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ across the Foundation Stage, KS1 and KS2.

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 and attention to high-quality language. We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception. As children move into Reception phonics is taught within a four-part lesson structure and teaching sequence (review, teach, practise, apply) as a whole class every day, which promotes independence, resilience and success in all our learners, this continues as they move into Year 1.

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1 are taught for up to 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: 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.  

The teaching of phonics is inclusive. All lessons include an active element, are fast-paced and engaging.  Planning for phonics is separate from the English planning; however, the phonics skills children learn during their explicit phonics lessons are also modelled in other areas of the curriculum, such as in shared reading and writing.

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. These sessions ensure 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. 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. 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 specific reading/writing gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least 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 use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching their secure phonics knowledge 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 KS2, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

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 out each element of new learning for 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. The Reading Leader and SLT use the audit and prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching; the summative data is used to identify children who need additional support.

At Southmead we believe that the learning does not only take place at school but that home learning is an integral part of the children’s progress and attainment. Parents are invited to attend phonics, reading and writing workshops to support their children with the development of their child’s phonics skills. In addition to this, a decodable reading book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family. Reading for pleasure books are also sent home for parents to share and read to children.

To ensure our phonics teaching is effective and inclusive, assessment is regarded as an integral part of the teaching and learning and is a continuous process. We strive to make our assessment purposeful; Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it. We continually assess our pupils and record their progress. Information for assessment is gathered daily through assessment for learning within class to identify children needing Keep-up support and weekly in the review lesson to assess gaps. These gaps are addressed immediately to secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings. Summative assessments take place 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. Assessment allows us to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2. Children in Year 2 to 6 are assessed through their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment as well as through the half-termly Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised summative assessments.

Phonics and Early Reading at Southmead Primary School Parent Workshop 22-23