Phonics and Early Reading at Holy Family

As part of the government’s efforts to improve literacy levels through high – quality phonics teaching, they have more recently published a list of validated systematic synthetic phonics programmes which they have recommended that schools follow. The aim of these schemes are to give all children a solid base upon which to build as they progress through school, and to develop in children a habit of reading widely and openly, for both pleasure and information.

Having reflected upon this advice, by conducting research and considering our current position with regard to the teaching of phonics and early reading at Holy Family, we have decided to implement an exciting new approach to this area of our curriculum through engagement with ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’.

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised covers phonics teaching from the beginning of Reception through to the end of Year 1; beginning at Phase 2, finishing at Phase 5 and extending provision for those children who may need it during their journey of learning. In addition, within the Nursery phase, it provides the children with a range of foundations such as oral blending to support their progress as they move forward with their learning.

Phonemic awareness (distinguishing the sounds which make up words) is a crucial skill underpinning phonics and reading; something which is strengthened through the early learning of phonics. Therefore, all of our children in Reception and Key Stage 1 take part in revised daily Little Wandle phonics lessons. These sessions are taught within the children’s classrooms, ensuring that there is both pace and progression for all of our children.

Alongside these daily phonics sessions, once children are ready to, they take part in three reading practise sessions per week. During these sessions, the children have the opportunity to apply their phonics’ learning when reading a range of decodable books, matched to their current individual progress. These sessions give the children the opportunity to revisit any graphemes and tricky words, explore unfamiliar vocabulary and read with fluency; developing their decoding, prosody and comprehension skills.

What are the different phonics phases that your child will work through?

Foundations in phonics

Little Wandle Foundations for Phonics is a programme by Little Wandle Letters and Sounds for early years settings (nursery and reception) that develops children's phonological awareness through engaging listening games, rhymes, and stories. It includes two main aspects: Rhyme Time to build a shared language and familiarity with sounds, and Tuning into Sounds to develop phonemic awareness with oral blending and attention skills. This programme establishes essential skills needed for success in the more formal Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme that begins in Reception.

Phase 2

The purpose of this Phase is to teach at least 19 letters and move children on from oral blending and segmenting to using letters/ graphemes. By the end of Phase 2, many children should be able to read some short words using a vowel and consonant such as ‘it, as, up’ and vowel, consonant, vowel words such as ‘cat, dog, hat’ etc. During Phase 2, the children will be introduced to reading two-syllable words and simple captions. They will also learn to read some ‘tricky words’.

By the end of Phase 2 children should:

• give the sound when shown any Phase 2 grapheme.
• find any Phase 2 grapheme, from a display, when given the sound.
• be able to orally blend and segment CVC words such as ‘cat’ or dog’.
• be able to blend and segment in order to read and spell words such as: if, am, on, up.

Phase 3

The purpose of Phase 3 is to teach another 25 graphemes, most of them comprising two letters (e.g. oa), so the children can represent phonemes (sounds) by a grapheme (letters). Children also continue to practise CVC blending and segmentation in this phase and will apply their knowledge of blending and segmenting to reading and spelling simple two-syllable words and captions. They will learn letter names, learn to read some more tricky words and begin to spell some tricky words

By the end of Phase 3 children should:

• give the sound when shown all Phase 2 and Phase 3 graphemes.
• be able to blend and read CVC words (e.g. single-syllable words consisting of Phase 2 and Phase 3 graphemes, such as ‘fish’ or ‘goat’.)
• be able to segment and make a phonemically plausible attempt at spelling words using Phase 2 and Phase 3 graphemes, such as ‘b-oa-t.’

 Pupils develop the skills of blending (combining sounds together to build words), segmenting (breaking up a word into individual sounds) and manipulating sounds to read and spell words correctly. This is carried out daily in Reception and Year 1 and is supported by the Little Wandle phonics programme.

Phase 4

The purpose of Phase 4 is to consolidate children’s knowledge of graphemes in reading and spelling words containing adjacent consonants and polysyllabic words. For example, words which begin with the adjacent consonants ‘str, thr, spl’ and contain more than one syllable, such as ‘splashing’. There are no new sounds to learn in this phase.

By the end of Phase 4 children should:

• give the sound when shown any Phase 2 and Phase 3 grapheme.
• be able to read words containing adjacent consonants (e.g. spl, thr, str such as string.)
• be able to blend and read words containing more than one syllable, such as farmyard.
• read CVC words at speed, along with the tricky words from the previous phase

Phase 5

The purpose of Phase 5 is for children to broaden their knowledge of graphemes and phonemes for use in reading and spelling. They will learn new graphemes and alternative pronunciations for some graphemes, e.g. the ‘ou’ grapheme makes a different sound in the words ‘mouth’ and ‘shoulder’.

Children become quicker at recognising graphemes and at blending the phonemes they represent. When spelling words, they will learn to choose the appropriate graphemes to represent phonemes and begin to build word-specific knowledge of the spellings of words. We can teach children how to make ‘best bets’ (best guess) when spelling new or unfamiliar words.

Phase 5 introduces the idea that some graphemes can be pronounced in more than one way. E.g. the ‘ch’ grapheme can be pronounced in each of these ways: ‘check, chef and school’.

By the end of Phase 5 children should:

• give the sound when shown any grapheme that has been taught
• write the common graphemes for any given sound
• apply phonic knowledge and skill as the prime approach to reading and spelling unfamiliar words that are not completely decodable
• read and spell phonically decodable two-syllable and three-syllable words
• read automatically all the words in the list of 100 high-frequency words
• accurately spell most of the words in the list of 100 high-frequency words
• children’s spellings should be phonetically plausible by the end of Phase 5

Children’s progress is continually reviewed and pupils are formally assessed at the end of each term. Formative assessment takes place throughout the term and informs planning. The national Phonics Screening Check is performed in June of Year 1.  The purpose of the screening check is to confirm that all children have learned phonic decoding to an age-appropriate standard. The children who did not meet the required standard for the check in Year 1 retake the phonic check in Year 2.

What if your child requires extra support with their phonics?

At Holy Family, we have a dedicated member of staff who works with those children who require extra support with their phonics skills. Children may receive daily intervention through small group or 1:1 sessions, depending on their level of need. As children enter KS2, intervention is also provided for those children who may require further phonic support. The phonics workshop, curriculum evening and parents' evenings, give parents information about how they can support their children at home with phonics.

Supporting your child at home