Phonics and Early Reading

 

During the Autumn Term 2022 we began teaching Phonics using the Little Wandle Phonics scheme. 

As well as a 20 minute phonic session per week, the children also access three reading practice sessions per week.

Children access phonic sessions that are matched to their ability following recent assessments. They will review previously learnt sounds, look at decoding new words, understanding what makes ‘tricky’ words tricky, and building on their spelling knowledge.

In the reading sessions we aim to build fluency, expression, internation (prosody) and comprehension.

The children read the same ‘matched decodable’ book as a group each session, and discuss it with an adult.

We then send home a fully decodable Phonic Book to read at home. This will be at the correct phonic stage for your child. This book has been carefully matched to your child’s current reading level based on most recent assessments. If your child is reading with little help – please don’t worry that it is too easy. Your child needs to develop fluency and confidence in reading.

We also send home a sharing book. This is a book that your child has chosen. They might not be able to read all of it, so please help them. Read it to them, talk about it, explain unfamiliar words and build up a love of reading.Information for parents on the Little Wandle scheme, resources to support learning at home and ‘how to’ videos can be found here https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Overview – Reception / Year 1

Reading

Approaches to Reading

At Grindleford Primary we aim to create life-long learners who have a passion for reading for the rest of their lives. Reading for pleasure is a key aspect of the curriculum and the basis for teaching children to read. Time is set aside for whole class storytelling. 

We recognise the importance of teaching a systematic synthetic phonics programme to build children’s speaking and listening skills in their own right as well as prepare children for learning to read by developing their phonic knowledge and skills. Our approach provides a detailed, systematic programme for teaching phonic skills for children starting in Reception, with the aim of them becoming fluent readers by age seven. We base our phonics teaching around the Little Wandle scheme of work and supplement this teaching approach during our day-to-day teaching (See Phonics information).

Phonic progress is assessed and tracked by the class teachers at least every half term and used to group children into appropriate learning groups based on individual needs.

To support learning, we encourage daily reading using books which use the National Book Banding system (KS1) for those children who have completed the phonics learning scheme. Children are engaged in their own personalised reading world through a wide variety of resources and rewards that keep them motivated.  Once children are confident readers, they take part in daily reading sessions. During these sessions, children have the opportunity to read with the teacher and then to complete activities to develop their understanding of texts.

Reading Record books are used by the class teacher and parents/carers to track children’s reading journey. All home and school reading should be recorded in the book. Teachers will reward progress and effort with positive rewards. We view regular home reading as very important and work with our parents to ensure a wide variety of reading can be enjoyed. We include reading as part of our homework provision for all children.

Once children become more proficient and independent with their reading, they progress to using the Accelerated Reader programme, primarily from KS2 onwards.  This allows the children to continue to access challenging and interesting texts that are both age and stage appropriate. They are able to undertake ‘quizzes’ on line which helps teachers to monitor and assess learning so that support can be targeted in a timely and effective way.  Children enjoy this programme and are able to read ‘real books’, including books from home or choose from a wide library held in school.

You can follow this link to look up any published book to identify if it there is a ‘quiz’ for a book and if it has been assessed to give it a ‘level’.  The children are invited to access a range of books which are at their current age and stage.   

https://www.arbookfind.co.uk/UserType.aspx?RedirectURL=%2fdefault.aspx

A parent guide to explain more about how Accelerated Reader works can be found here:

http://www.renlearn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AR-parents-guide-updated.pdf

For those children who find reading more problematic, help is at hand.  The teachers and TAs have been trained to identify struggling readers and provided Early Help and targeted reading interventions which meet the needs of the individual children.  We work closely with parents and offer a range of interventions which include (but are not limited to):

• Nessy (an online reading, writing and spelling intervention)
• Action Words (whole word reading)
• Comprehension and inference support
• Squeebles (High Frequency Word reading)

Useful free sites to support parents and children:

BBC Bite Size – suitable for KS1 and KS2

Information available for parents and pupils including interactive games

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zkxxsbk   KS1

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zhrrd2p  KS2

Writing including Grammar

Improving Outcomes in Writing:

The Write Stuff Approach

As a school we have adopted “The Write Stuff” by Jane Constantine to bring clarity to the mechanics of writing. ‘The Write Stuff’ follows a method called ‘Sentence Stacking’ which refers to the fact that sentences are stacked together and organised to engage children with short, intensive moments of learning that they can then immediately apply to their own writing.

This approach makes sure that all of our children are exposed to high quality texts that stimulate quality responses to reading, high quality writing and purposeful speaking and listening opportunities. Our curriculum ensures that all children have plenty of opportunities to write for different purposes. We encourage writing through all curriculum areas and use quality reading texts to model examples of good writing. Writing is taught through a number of different strategies. We believe that children need lots of rich speaking and drama activities to give them the imagination and the experiences that will equip them to become good writers.

An individual lesson is based on a sentence model, broken in to three chunks. 

The Write Stuff is based on two guiding principles; teaching sequences that slide between experience days and sentence stacking lessons. With modelling at the heart of them, the sentence

 stacking lessons are broken into bite-sized chunks and taught under the structural framework of The Writing Rainbow. Teachers prepare children for writing by modelling the ideas, grammar or techniques of writing.

• Initiate section – a stimulus to capture the children’s imagination and set up a sentence.
• Model section – the teacher close models a sentence that outlines clear writing features and techniques.
• Enable section – the children write their sentence, following the model.

“The Write Stuff” also reinforces grammar through the use of:

• The FANTASTICs which are an acronym that summarise the ideas of writing
• The GRAMMARISTIC is a classroom tool that enables the teacher to drive key grammar messages.
• The BOMBASTICs which helps children capture 10 ways of adding drama and poetic devices to writing in a vivid visual

Key benefits of The Write Stuff:

• Support for teachers so that they have a deeper and more flexible knowledge of sentence structure.
• Pupils who understand how to apply sentence scaffolds to their independent writing as they develop their expertise.
• Standards improve because many worked examples are provided over the year that extend understanding through a wide range of genres and non-fiction text types.
• Children have a clear view of what high quality writing looks like and their learning is structured clearly and misconceptions dealt with.
• Pupils know how to improve their writing and make it more focussed and actionable feedback is provided to guide their learning.
• Children have a concept of how to build, plan and complete a piece of writing due to narrative maps and non-fiction shapes.
• Teachers have clear pathways of how to guide pupils in weak areas such as cohesion and paragraphs.

How does it improve outcomes for disadvantaged children?

As a school, we are following the latest research evidence: a strategy of improving and ensuring quality first teaching which helps all children but is shown to have a positive impact on our most disadvantaged pupils. The Write Stuff uses effective approaches for tackling disadvantage which is heavily supported by the Education Endowment Foundation. Wider research shows us that disadvantaged children may have lower self esteem and feel less successful; they may have a reduced vocabulary; less or different life experiences and we know relationships really matter to these pupils. We need to make it our job to help these children with these particular areas so that they become confident and independent writers.

Spelling 

We also use the Jane Constantine Spelling scheme to teach age and stage appropriate spelling so that pupils can become confident spellers.  Spelling is taught in discret sessions daily.