Phonics (Reading and Spelling)

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.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. 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.

Comprehension

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.

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled at teaching phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

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 Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Daily Keep-up Sessions

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 or 3 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 Keep-up resources – at pace. 

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.

Reading Sessions 

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 grids (pages 11–20 of ‘Application of phonics to reading’),
• 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:

1. Decoding.
2. Prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
3. Comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

​Home Reading

The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family. Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children. 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 parent workshops.

​Ensuring Consistency and Pace of Progress

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 each element of new learning to 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 Phonics Leader, English Team and SLT use the audit and prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching. Teachers and Leaders use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

Assessment

Through the explicit teaching of phonics, both the teachers, and when appropriate, the pupils, assess the learning continuously throughout every lesson. Our assessment systems incorporates the Little Wandle assessment framework and enables teachers to make informed judgements about the children's current phonic knowledge and tracks the progress they have made over time. 

At Carlton Colville we believe that reading is the key that unlocks all learning. Therefore, our intention is to create academic learners who achieve mastery in decoding and understanding texts by the time they leave our school. We provide our pupils with numerous opportunities to apply their reading skills across all curriculum subjects and the wider school curriculum.

We understand the vital connection between learning to read for pleasure and academic success/mental well-being. Children who read, really do succeed! Because of this, throughout a child’s time at Carlton Colville Primary School, a team of adults and older children serve as role models to nurture every pupil’s reading career, to ensure they are reading for pleasure.

This ethos of reading for pleasure permeates the entire school curriculum at Carlton Colville Primary School. In particular, we intend to enhance the quality of childhood experience and expand the horizons of any children deemed to have a low cultural capital (whether due to a disadvantaged background or any other reason). We intend to provide all children with a wealth of rich texts and, in particular, texts that they may not have otherwise encountered during childhood.

Our intention is that (by the end of Key Stage 2) pupils at Carlton Colville Primary School will be able: to read fluently and with expression, varying the tone of the voice to suit purpose and audience; to infer and deduce, so that they understand when writers are using metaphor, shades of meaning, figurative language, or are simply leaving some things unsaid; to understand texts from diverse genres and authors and to read for information in order to access the secondary curriculum.

We intend for our past pupils to begin secondary education with a lifelong love of books and reading and with the confidence to visit the library at their new high schools and select a suitable book; to enter secondary education with a deep-seated curiosity in books – an ability to select books that they know they will enjoy, but, moreover, a desire to explore and seek out new text types, authors and genres. 
 

Carlton Colville Primary School’s reading curriculum is driven by key texts from the Reading Spine that launch or underpin each topic and drive the topic's theme*, e.g. George’s Secret Key to the Universe linked to Space…the Final Frontier? in Year 5. Therefore, the school’s curriculum model is itself based upon reading across the curriculum. In Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 every child has access to their own copy of most of the class texts each half term. Children are permitted to take these texts home and read as part of their weekly home-reading, resulting in increased reading stamina, and more time in class to use the class text to drive guided reading, topic and written work, where appropriate. The initial ‘driving text,’ is then supported with additional literature surrounding the same topic but introduces non – fiction, poetry and a range of other genres.

The Teaching of Reading – EYFS and Key Stage 1
In the Early Years Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, we teach reading through a rigorous systematic synthetic phonics programme - Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised and our reading provision is also fully informed by current research and The Reading Framework: Teaching the Foundations of Literacy (DFE January 2022).

Big Cat Little Wandle books are used as the decoding books for pupils progressing through the Little Wandle programme. These books are carefully matched to the ability of each pupil, containing only the graphemes that the pupil has previously secured. Following the Little Wandle programme, pupils receive three reading practice sessions a week, focusing on: decoding, prosody and comprehension respectively.

Pupils struggling to secure particular phoneme/grapheme correspondence (GPCs) are identified quickly and receive catch-up sessions, as outlined in the Little Wandle programme [please see Phonics Policy for more details about the teaching of phonics].

Throughout their time in EYFS and Key Stage 1, pupils also take home a reading for pleasure book from the library or classroom book corner in order to develop a love of reading for pleasure and to increase their cultural capital. This book is to be enjoyed with parents and carers, who read the book to the child, unless the child has completed the Little Wandle programme and is able to decode the book. Readers still working through the Little Wandle programme are not expected to decode the reading for pleasure book. In years 1 and 2, this reading for pleasure book is often a book from the Reading Robins and Reading Puffins collection respectively, where pupils earn rewards for listening to aspirational texts with their parents and carers throughout the year. To support our younger pupils to take ownership of their reading, children in Key Stage 1 have Magpie Books that can be used during free reading time or in adult-led reading and writing activities where appropriate. Pupils use these books to collect and build up interesting ideas to use in their writing.

The Teaching of Reading: Key Stage 2
At Key Stage 2, the teaching of reading happens in a combination of shared reading (usually whole-class) and guided reading (in small groups). All teaching and support staff have received “FFT Reciprocal Reading” training and utilise this throughout the school where appropriate to the needs of the children, as a small group approach (or an intervention) to develop independence and comprehension skills.
In addition to direct teaching, teachers read high quality texts to pupils throughout the year, also using this as an opportunity to hear pupils read aloud and develop their fluency and prosody. These texts are detailed on each year group’s class reader timetable, and on the whole-school Reading Spine. All pupils in years 3, 4, 5 and 6 participate in the Reading Owls, Reading Falcons, Reading Hawks and Reading Eagles scheme respectively, where children can earn rewards for reading a range of aspirational texts throughout the year. To support reading widely for pleasure, children in Key Stage 2 have Magpie Books that can be used during free reading time or in adult-led reading and writing activities where appropriate. Pupils use these books to collect and build up interesting ideas to use in their writing.

Reading for Pleasure
We know that reading is the key that unlocks all the learning and we understand the vital connection between learning to read for pleasure and academic success/mental well-being. Children who read, really do succeed! Because of this, throughout a child’s time at Carlton Colville Primary School, a team of adults and older children serve as role models to nurture every pupil’s reading career, to ensure they are reading for pleasure: the Reading Spine is the bedrock of our reading curriculum, detailing all of the quality authors and texts a pupil will meet during their time at our school. An ethos of reading for pleasure permeates the entire school curriculum at Carlton Colville Primary School and is led by our Reading for Pleasure Leader. The following provision is evident in our school:

1. Daily class reader/storytime sessions
2. Classroom reading challenge
3. Classroom book corners
4. Classroom book recommendations /book blessings
5. Book Club, including blessings/recommendations
6. Website book of the week
7. The Library
8. Junior Librarians
9. Library Loyalty Card
10. Reading Birds scheme
11. Opportunities to use Magpie Books
12. Reading Gladiators
13. Celebrating World Book Day
14. Bounce for Books Fundraiser
15. The Book Fair
16.  Learning Together events and Storytime events with parents and carers
17. Weekly reading time
18. Virtual reading for pleasure sessions
19. Early Bird Reading parent and carer helpers

Assessment
Our bespoke assessment systems enables teachers to make informed judgements about the depth learning and the progress each pupil has made over time. Critically this then enables teachers to identify and therefore address any gaps in pupil’s reading knowledge.
Through skilled questioning, teachers pick up on any misconceptions which they rectify through live feedback during the lessons and through marking of pupils' work.

• Pupils who read widely for pleasure, understanding why reading is so important.
• Pupils achieving bronze, silver and gold in the Reading Birds Scheme.
• Pupils who have successfully completed Reading Gladiators.
• High numbers of pupil applications for the role of Junior Librarian.
• Older pupil can offer reading support, advice and encouragement to younger pupils.
• A culture of book blessings/recommendations in classrooms.
   

Pupil voice from recent Year 6 leavers:

“We have greatly enjoyed books and stories in our enrichment sessions – it is powerful hearing lots of different adults read to us and promote books.”

“I remember learning phonics which was the start of my reading journey. I couldn’t read without phonics…learning my ABCs as well – that was the start of it all.”

“Teachers reading to us is amazing. Sometimes we get to act out the character we are reading about. Other times we magpie or read along with our own copy of the text. I like the way different teachers put on voices for the characters.”

“Reading Gladiators and the Reading Birds challenges definitely lifted my reading off the ground. They made me read things I wouldn’t normally have picked and I loved them!”

“Yes – they make you read a wider range of books and get out of your comfort zone.”

“My all time favourite book was “Once” by Morris Gleitzmann. It moved me and one of us went out and bought all of the books in the trilogy. Everyone should read once at least once – haha!”

"Picture books can be a peaceful break from text, when you just want to think deeply about something and not worry about decoding text. They still move on your comprehension."