At Chaucer Infant and Nursery School, we know that high quality phonics teaching and learning is vital to children’s success with reading and writing.

We believe that for all our children to become fluent readers and writers , phonics must be taught through a systematic and structured phonics programme from the very beginning.

We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised to plan and provide daily engaging Phonics lessons.

Intent

Phonics (Reading and Spelling)

At Chaucer Infant and Nursery School, 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 where the children learn to explore, play with and differentiate between different sounds. 
Discreet Phonic lessons begin in Reception and follow the Little Wandle 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. At Chaucer Infant and Nursery 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 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

At Chaucer Infant and Nursery School, 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. 

Our beautiful Libraries, both at the heart of school and in classrooms, are continually updated with new and engaging reads. Alongside their weekly Little Wandle book, children take home a fiction and non-fiction book to share with their grown-ups at home. 
We encourage wider reading by selecting texts to enhance topics and each year group has an author of the term to further expose children to even more options in their reading. 

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.

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.

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. 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 and above 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 Rapid Catch-up assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Rapid Catch-up resources – at pace. 

These short, sharp lessons last 15-20 minutes daily and have been designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading.

Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week

We teach children to read through reading practice sessions three times a week.
These sessions:

• 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:

1. decoding
2. prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
3. comprehension: teaching children to understand the text.

In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.

In Years 2 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

Home reading

The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.

Reading for pleasure books, both fiction and non-fiction, also go home for parents to share and read to children. 

Children from Reception onwards have a home reading record. The parent/carer records comments to share with the adults in school and the adults will write in this on a regular basis to ensure communication between home and school. These diaries share the success and next steps in the children's reading, as well as sharing what families are enjoying reading together at home. 

At the start of the year, we invite parents to a Phonics meeting to find out how it is taught and the stages their children will be learning. We also share the Little Wandle Parents' resources to share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision.

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 SLT 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 Chaucer Infant and Nursery School and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.

Every classroom has an inviting class library 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 the EYFS, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.

Impact

Our Little Wandle phonic lessons we develop a love of and confidence in reading. Children confidencelt read decodable texts that are well-matched to children’s developing phonics knowledge and a love of reading underpins all learning. 

Assessment

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it. We use Little Wandle's assessments to ensure all children make the best progress they can 

>Assement for Learning is used:

• daily within class to identify children needing Keep-up support
• weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

>Summative assessment for Reception and Year 1 is used:

• every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
• by SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.

> 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 Years 2 to 6, when they are reading the Phase 5 set 3, 4 and 5 books
• to assess when children are ready to exit their programme. For Year 1 children, this is when they 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 ready 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.

>The Rapid Catch-up Assessment is used: 

• with any child new to the school in Year 2 and above to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and plan and provide appropriate extra teaching.
• with children who are not working at Age Related Expectations 
• to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and plan appropriate teaching
• to assess progress and inform teaching

Statutory assessment

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics screening check. Any child not passing the check
re-sits it in Year 2.