Early Reading and Phonics
At Albemarle, we believe that the high quality teaching of Phonics provides a fundamental platform for children's future learning and development.
At Albemarle we know that all our children can become fluent readers and writers.
To achieve this we teach phonics through a systematic and structured phonics programme.
We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in 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. In phonics, we teach children that the letters of the alphabet represent a different sound, that these can be used in a variety of combinations and are put together to make words. The children learn to recognise all of the different sounds and combinations that they might see when they are reading or writing.
We model these strategies through shared reading and writing during the phonics lesson and across the curriculum. We have a strong focus on the development of language skills for our children because we know the importance of speaking and listening as crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.
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:
- 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 what has been taught in Reception and then continue with Phase 5. .
Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read
- 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.
Reading for pleasure – Early Years and KS1
As well as daily teaching of phonics, reading for pleasure is an important part of our Early Reading offer. We support children to develop a love of reading and expose them to a wide range of interesting and relevant authors. These are some of the ways that we promote a love for reading:
- Daily timetabled story time.
- Talk through stories in Reception
- A set of core stories in Year One that will be read and read to build a depth of understanding.
- Teaching of poetry, which includes performing and learning poems by heart.
- Book areas within the classroom which have a careful selection of books.
- Alongside children’s decodable reading book, children also take home a reading for pleasure book each week. In each year group, children will take home a range of books by authors, including some which they have read in class.
- Parent/carer workshops on developing reading for pleasure
If you would like more information about how to support your child with phonics at home, please follow this link to find the Reception and Year 1 overview as well as videos of the sound pronunciations, letter formation sheets and other helpful resources.
https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/