Phonics

At Wyberton, we believe that all our children can become fluent 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. Research shows that systematic synthetic phonics is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. In phonics sessions they are taught how to:

• recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes;
• identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make - such as ‘sh’ or ‘oo’; 
• blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word
• read some words that do not follow the rules of phonics - these are known as tricky words
• segment sounds to spell words

In Year One, children take part in a phonics screening check. This check is designed to confirm whether pupils have learnt phonic decoding to an appropriate standard. It will identify pupils who need extra help to improve their decoding skills. The check consists of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words that a pupil reads aloud to the teacher.

Please use the link below to find more information about Little Wandle, helpful how to videos and more ways you can support your child with their reading.

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1 

• We teach phonics for 20 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.  

Daily Keep-up and Catch 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. 

• We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 to 6 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics screening check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Rapid Catch Up resources – at pace.  

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week- Little Wandle 

• 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 

• 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 to Year 6, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books through the Rapid Catch Up daily intervention groups. 

Home reading 

• The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.  This is sent out every Thursday after your child has read it 3 times in school with an adult.

• Sharing books also go home for parents to share and read to children. These are swapped on Mondays and Thursdays.

• We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops. 

• When children move away from phonics, children move to choosing an age appropriate book.

Phonics Help

Glossary

Blend:
When children have learned individual letter sounds, they blend – put them together – to form whole words, e.g. 'mmm-u-mmm' _ 'mum'.

Decodable words:
Words a reader can sound out, because he or she has been taught all the phonic sounds that occur in those particular words.

Digraph:
Two letters together that represent one sound e.g. 'ph', 'ch' (consonant digraphs) or 'ai', 'ea', 'oo', 'au' (vowel digraphs).

Fluency:
The ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression and understanding.

High frequency words:
Common words that occur most frequently in writing, e.g. and, the, as, it. Children are expected to recognise different high frequency words depending on which year they are in at school.

Phonics:
Knowledge of the speech sounds that letters make in words, not their names, so for ship, not 'ess' 'haych' 'igh' 'pee' but the sounds 'sh-i-p'

Segment:
Breaking a word into its individual sounds, e.g. 'ship - sh-i-p'

Sight vocabulary:
Words that children learn to recognise at a glance by their overall look, rather than by sounding out each letter. It helps to learn many high frequency words at a glance because they turn up so often in books. As a child becomes a more confident reader, their sight vocabulary will grow naturally.

Synthetic phonics:
A description of the method of learning to read whereby children learn letter sounds and how to blend these sounds together to make words.

Trigraph:
Three letters together that represent one unit of sound e.g. 'igh' in the word night.