Learning to Read in our School - Early Years to End of Year 1
Our phonics scheme is for early readers and is called 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised'. It is accredited and compliant with the Early Years Framework (2021). In school, we have many sets of phonically decodable books that accompany the programme and the children are matched to the appropriate text for their phonics knowledge. Children will read these books in school with their teachers at least three times, focusing on fluency, prosody and comprehension. Following this, the book will go home to be shared as a celebration of their new knowledge. With robust daily phonics sessions, along with the regular reading sessions, children can then achieve the aims of this high-quality phonics programme.
For further information regarding phonics, please visit the site below or feel free to speak with Mrs Elsley (English Lead) or Mrs Ball (Starling Class teacher).
LW Progression Overview for Reception and Year 1.pdf
LW Key guidance EYFS.pdf
LW Key guidance Year 1.pdf
Beyond the phonics scheme
Once the children have completed the phonics scheme, they progress through our Little Wandle Fluency books. These are carefully matched to the children's levels through accredited assessments. The first five stages are all phonetically decodable, whereas stages 6-10 build on those first steps to becoming independent free readers.
Once children have mastered these stages, they are free to choose a selection of texts from our library or smaller class selections which are continually being updated to meet the reading interested of our readers. We aim to provide books that are provide ' mirrors (reflecting their own lives) and windows (reflecting the wider world), to the world around them.
Reading interventions
At our school, we recognise that the ability to be a fluent reader greatly improves future life chances. Because of this, reading interventions play a great importance for us. Any child struggling with phonics will take part in Little Wandle keep-up or catch-up intervention sessions. These sessions take place with trained adults in order that the children make progress within the scheme. Along with this all pupils whose families are in receipt of the pupil premium grant, our bottom 20% readers and any 'at risk' children have individual reading at least 3 times a week.
The Reading Diet in our School
We ensure children are exposed to a range of literature that helps them to build cultural capital and this is delivered through our CLPE inspired English curriculum. We have deliberately chosen high-quality literature based on our community's needs as well as choosing to expose children to authors who are culturally significant and write books in series.
Children in Key Stage 2 will have daily whole class reading sessions as well as the daily class story. One of these sessions is set aside weekly to explore 'Book Talk' where the children alongside the teacher, discuss books that they are reading independently, new texts to the school as well as make recommendations to one another.
For more information, please speak to Mrs Elsley.
Literature Canon
Our Literature canon sets out the texts that all children are exposed to at our school. Each title has been carefully chosen to meet the needs of our children. These texts form the basis of our English curriculum, as well as our daily class readers.