Early Reading & Phonics
At Easterside Academy, we believe it is imperative to our children’s lives that they can not only read, but that they become readers. As such, we aim to start their reading journeys with a passion and enthusiasm for stories and books; alongside building their confidence in decoding and reading for themselves. We hope to ignite a love of reading at this early stage in their lives, that they will carry with them forever.
A strong start
The teaching of early reading starts with our youngest children in Nursery. To ensure our Nursery children are well prepared and ready to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending from week one in Reception we:
- Prioritise high-quality adult-child interactions, including frequent back and forth conversations
- Provide activities that develop listening and attention, including oral blending
- Teach through a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences
- Deliver our curriculum through the use of carefully selected stories, songs and rhymes
- Share high-quality stories every day
The teaching of high-quality phonics
We recognise the importance of all children making a strong start in learning to read.
At Easterside we have adopted the Little Wandle systematic phonics programme. This is a rigorous programme which ensures children in Reception and Key Stage 1 quickly gain the phonics knowledge and early reading skills that they need.
Children take part in daily Little Wandle phonics sessions. During the lessons children will:
- Learn 44 sounds and the corresponding letter/letter groups using simple picture prompts
- Learn to read words using sound blending
- Read tricky words
- Read lively stories featuring the words that they have learnt to sound out
- Show that they comprehend the stories by answering questions
- Write the letters/letter groups which represent the 44 sounds
- Write words by saying sounds
- Write simple sentences
How we teach
Pupils work within ability groups which are defined by their performance on Little Wandle phonic assessments. Pupils are re-assessed every half term and the groups are re-organised accordingly.
Delivery of lessons
- Set one sounds are taught in a specific order
- Children are taught the ‘pure’ sounds
- Children are taught to orally blend using
- Children are taught to sound out and blend words and then read them with greater fluency and speed.
- Tricky words (words that are often not decodable) are taught to be read on sight.
Home Reading Books
When your child has learnt enough sounds and is ready to blend these sounds to make a word, they will take home a decodable book matched to their phonic ability. Children should be able to read 95% of their decodable book on sight.
Reading Sessions
Each of the three Little Wandle reading practice sessions is a dedicated 20 minutes of reading. Teachers ‘tap in’ to hear every child read without any distraction three times a week. Every child gets individual attention, and each session has a very clear focus.
Children also benefit from repeated practice in the pre-read part of each session. It helps them become quicker at reading the GPCs, words and tricky words they will find in the book. Their language learning is supported by the introduction of key vocabulary. Teachers use the same strategies as used in the daily phonics lesson sessions which helps reduce cognitive load.
- Read 1: decoding – this has a clear focus on applying phonic knowledge to word reading.
- Read 2: prosody – teaches children to read with prosody, so that they learn to read aloud with appropriate meaning, stress and intonation.
- Read 3: comprehension – the final reading session explores comprehension.
Assessment and Recording
Children are assessed throughout every lesson. The teacher assesses how children:
- Recognise graphemes
- Read the words containing graphemes
- Read tricky words
- Decode the story book
- Comprehend the text
Daily keep up is used in EYFS and KS1 classes for those children that need frequent repetition of the sounds and graphemes. Children who are at risk of falling behind are identified quickly and given 1:1 or small group tutoring sessions.
Any child in Year 3 or above who are not reading at the expected level for their age will take part in the Rapid Catch-up programme. Rapid Catch-up mirrors the main phonics programme but has been created to help children catch up quickly, so has a faster pace.