Early reading
Reading in Foundation
In Foundation, the children are taught phonics using Little Wandles, which is an accredited systematic, synthetic programme. Children begin to learn the foundations for phonics in F1.
Foundation 1 children learn to orally segment and blend and discriminate between sounds. In Foundation 2, children move on to Phase 2, 3 and 4: this promotes the learning of grapheme phoneme correspondence (which letters link to which sounds) and this gives the children the opportunity to spell words by sounding out their phonemes. They also learn the tricky words that we can not sound out such as 'the'.
In Foundation we use a range of early reading books in order to expose the children to different characters. Children are read with every week and we ask that parents read with the children at home every school day. Story reading also includes reading our shared whole class reading book. We practise our reading in a group and use skills such as making connections, predicting what might happen next and inference skills where we use clues to work something out.
In Foundation, Communication and Language development is a key priority. Teaching staff follow the principles from 'The Language Lead' project to ensure that all interactions with children are of high quality. This is interlinked in our discussions about books and reading for pleasure.
Reading at KS1
In Year 1, children continue to be taught using the 'Little Wandles' programme. There is detailed transition work between Foundation and Year 1, which ensures carefully targeted teaching of phonics at the correct level for each child. Children in Year 1 focus on Phase 5 for the full year. This ensures time to learn the alternative pronunciations and graphemes. Children are taught as a whole class, with targeted 'keep up' sessions for those children who require practice on previously taught phases. The lessons follow a clear structure of review, teach, practise and apply.
Children who did not pass the phonics test in Year 1 receive further support in year 2 in small groups or 1-1 depending on the needs of the child.
Children across Foundation and KS1 read decodable 'Little Wandle' books, which coincide with the phonics phase they are at. To develop fluency, we use 'Switch On' to deliver a 12-15 week programme to enable children to achieve their fluency target.