Phonics
At Lakey Lane we use Little Wandle (Letters and Sounds Revised) as our approved systematic synthetic phonic programme to teach early reading and spelling. It sets expectations of progression that are aspirational yet achievable. We will work through the entire Little Wandle Programme until every child can successfully utilise their phonic knowledge and blending skills to read fluently. Children need to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible, so they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading.
Children in Reception and Year 1 have daily phonics lessons. They are taught 4 new grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs) per week, plus a review lesson on a Friday. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme (sound) to a grapheme (written representation) and vice versa. The children will also learn a series of ‘tricky words’. Tricky words are those words with code that has not been taught yet. We build into the timetable some weeks for the children to consolidate what has been taught so far. We assess every child every six weeks to check progress. Any child who needs extra support will have keep-up sessions planned for them.
Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will also take part in Reading Practice Sessions. Children read books that are matched specifically to their phonics ability so that children are able to decode each word in the book. This book goes home each week on a Thursday so that they can build on their fluency of reading at homeReading Teaching Sessions are:
● Timetabled 3 times a week● Taught by a trained teacher / teaching assistant● Taught in small groups
The children read the same book three times a week. The first time we work on decoding (sounding out) the words, the second time we work on prosody, which is reading with expression – this aids comprehension and encourages our children to read like writers and the third time we look at comprehension. We read the book three times in school because we want to develop fluency. The more children see words, the more they begin to read them automatically without having to sound them out.