Intent

At Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, we believe that reading is the key to unlocking potential and a world of learning. We recognise that reading skills develop over time and we acknowledge that these begin with a secure phonic knowledge. It is essential that our approach to teaching phonics and reading is accessible to all learners, regardless of their background, that is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised, which is a systematic synthetic phonics programme.

We start teaching phonics in 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. 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 and ambitious focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects. We encourage children to be curious and our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary.

At Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, we value reading as a crucial life skill. Our teachers promote the love of reading through sharing high quality texts aloud to the class every day, enjoying poetry and getting excited about their own favourite books. To ensure that our children meet a wealth of diverse texts and authors, the books we read are mapped out on our topic overviews, so by the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure.

Around our school our love of reading is evident in in our library and classroom book areas and driven through our core values. Our teachers are knowledgeable about books, we enrich children’s learning experiences by incorporating author visits, book fairs and the services of the local library into the curriculum. 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.

Implementation

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.

• Little Wandle Foundations is aligned to the non-statutory guidance on Development Matters and Birth to 5 Matters as well as the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework. We use it as part of our wider provision for Communication and Language, and Literacy. It supports children to:

• develop their phonological awareness, including rhyme, alliteration, syllables, initial and voice sounds, and oral blending
• love stories and rhymes, and learn by heart a bank of familiar favourites
• increase their vocabulary and confidence to talk
• improve their listening and ability to take part in back-and-forth conversations.

• We believe that the priority in Nursery should be to build the foundations for phonics for all children. Research tells us that disadvantaged children start Nursery behind their more fortunate peers. By leaving formal phonics teaching to Reception, Foundations allows us to devote more time to working with children who need extra help to develop the skills and behaviours that underpin successful reading.

Language and nursery rhymes in Reception

• Research tells us that nursery rhymes can support children to develop their language, their awareness of sounds within words and even their later reading (Bryant et al. 1989).
• We use the Little Wandle Rhyme time films and accompanying phonological awareness planning to complement and reinforce our Phase 2 teaching.

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

Daily keep-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.
• Daily Keep-up lessons follow the Little Wandle progression and use the same procedures, resources, and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition so that every child secures their learning.

Daily phonics and spelling in Year 2

• Year 2 begins by using assessment to ensure that children have completed the Little Wandle Year 1 progression. Any gaps in teaching are addressed through daily phonics lessons until the programme is completed. Corresponding summative assessments are carried out to ensure this content is secure.
• Once all the Year 1 content has been taught and assessed, we teach a five-week Phase 5 review. This ensures that children secure the trickier elements of Phase 5 and can apply this alphabetic knowledge in both reading and spelling.
• We use the Phase 5 review assessment before teaching in Year 2 to identify any children who may need more support when teaching. We reassess after teaching the Phase 5 review.
• Once the Phase 5 review is secure; we teach the Bridge to Spelling before moving to the Spelling units.
• Children with larger gaps in their phonic knowledge than their peers have daily phonics teaching and follow the Rapid Catch-up programme.

Children in Year 2

We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 and above who is not at age-related expectations for 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.

• These short, sharp lessons last 20 minutes daily and have been designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading.
• We assess children who are new to our school, new to the country or new to English using the Core Programme and/or Rapid Catch-up assessments to quickly identify their needs.
• We use these assessments to identify the gaps in children’s phonic knowledge and teach these using the Core Programme and/or Rapid Catch-up resources – at pace.
• We assess children every four weeks using the summative assessments to assess progress and inform teaching.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week

• 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 on 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:
  • 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 of teaching at the latest. Initially, children will read wordless books. In these sessions, children review GPCS and are taught blending using teacher-led blending. Once children can blend, they progress onto decodable books matched to their secure phonic knowledge.
• Children read each book three times to develop phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and comprehension as well as book behaviours.
• In Year 2, we ensure children complete reading the core programme decodable books (up to Phase 5 Set 5). To exit the programme, we complete the final fluency assessment to ensure children can read with adequate speed and accuracy: approximately 60 words per minute with 90%+ accuracy.
• Reading in Rapid Catch-up lessons mirrors the core programme. Children following the Rapid Catch-up programme are taught to read using a mix of the core programme and 7+ fully decodable books. These follow the same progression as the core programme but are more appropriate for older readers.

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 share the research behind the importance and impact of sharing quality children’s books with parents through workshops, leaflets and the Everybody read! resources.
  • 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.

Additional reading support for vulnerable children

• Children in Reception and Year 1 who are receiving additional phonics keep-up sessions read their reading practice book to an adult daily.
• We prioritise children who may not have reading support at home or who may not have access to books. We ensure that they have individual reading times with volunteers and staff to share quality children’s literature to promote a love of reading.

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 Reading Leader and Senior Leadership Team use the Audit and Prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

Ensuring reading for pleasure

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002)

‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

• We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, and our local community. We also share books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
• Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
• In Nursery/Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their child-initiated learning time and the books are regularly refreshed.
• Children from Nursery and Reception choose from our range of books to take home and share with an adult. Children from Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school so we get to know them as readers.
• As the children progress through the school, we take time to get to know them as readers and ensure that we engage in meaningful conversations about the books that they have read. By doing this we can recommend authors and genres of books to expand their interests.
• Each class as opportunities to visits the school library.
• The school library is made available for classes to use at protected times. It is used throughout the day for reading sessions or story times. Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of Reading for Pleasure events (book fairs, author visits and workshops, national events etc).
• We use the ‘Everybody read!’ resources to grow our teachers’ knowledge of current books, the most recent research and to grow our own Reading for Pleasure practice.

Impact

Assessment

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

• Assessment for learning is used:
  • daily within class to identify children needing keep-up support.
  • to plan repeated practice throughout the day to ensure all children secure learning.
  • weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words, and spellings.

• Summative assessments are uploaded onto the Assessments tracker for Reception and Year 1. These are used:
  • to generate visual reports (pupil heatmaps, pupil trends and books levels, and a summary analysis) for individual children, classes, and whole year groups
  • by teachers, our Reading Leader and the Senior Leadership Team who look at the data at GPC, word, tricky word, and sentence level.
  • by the Senior Leadership Team and Reading Leader to scrutinise and plan how to narrow the attainment gaps between different groups of children and to put in place any additional support for teachers.

We assess:

• every six weeks to assess progress and to identify gaps in learning that need to be reviewed or retaught.
• to establish if learning is secure for more than 70% of children before new content is taught.
• to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.

We also reassess every child who is not on track every three weeks.

• Fluency assessments measure children’s accuracy and reading speed in short one-minute assessments. They are used:

• in Year 1, when children are reading the Phase 5 set 3, 4 and 5 books.
• with children following the Rapid Catch-up programme in Year 2, when they are reading the Phase 5 set 3, 4 and 5 books.
• to assess when children are ready to exit their programme*

*Year 2 children can exit the Rapid-Catch-up programme when they can read the final fluency assessment at 60–70+ words per minute. Older children can exit the Rapid Catch-up programme when they read the final fluency assessment at 90+ words per minute. At these levels, children should have sufficient fluency to tackle any book at age-related expectations. After exiting their programme, children do not need to read any more fully decodable books.

• A placement assessment is used:
  • with any child new to the school in Reception and Year 1 to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and plan and provide appropriate extra teaching.

Statutory assessment

• Children in Year 1 sit the Statutory Phonics Screening Check. Any child not passing the check
  re-sits it in Year 2.

As a result of carefully planned and accurate teaching of phonics through the ‘Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds’ programme, our children leave Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery ready for their future learning. They are accurate and fluent readers who can apply their reading skills across a wide range of subjects. Through our exciting and enriching topic themes, children develop a love for reading as they are exposed to a wide range of texts and poetry.

At Maidenbower Infant School and Nursery, we teach phonics right from the beginning. We use the validated phonics scheme 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' to ensure high quality and consistent teaching of phonics and early reading for every child. Below you will find a link to the parent page of the Little Wandle website where you can find out more about how to support your child with phonics and early reading at home. 

All children at school have free access to the Collins e-books which work alongside our phonics programme in school. Your child's teacher will allocate them a phonics book to read that is suitable for their level of reading. Please ask your child's class teacher if you have not received the log in details.

Below, you will find tabs to a number of useful resources to support your child with their phonics and reading at home. 

Below, you can find links to phonics games, tricky word videos and a bank of online stories in different languages, should you wish to engage with these at home with your child.