Intent

At Queensway Primary School we believe that learning to read is the most important thing your child will learn at out school. We INSPIRE all children to ACHIEVE, by providing them with opportunities to become confident and enthusiastic readers which allows them to access learning throughout the curriculum.

We want all children to love reading – EXPLORE and DISCOVER books for themselves. As well as inspiring children to learn how to read, we are enthusiastic about promoting a love for reading at our school.

'The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.' - Dr Seuss

Aims:

• Raise standards by providing all children with a systematic and synthetic approach to teaching phonics which ensures all children ACHIEVE.
• Follow our chosen SSP Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised with fidelity.
• Identify children who need extra support and provide Daily Keep-Up sessions.
• Encourage children to be curious about books and literature and read for both pleasure and purpose. 
• Ensure parents / carers receive regular updates and access to workshops so they can support their child at home.
• Continue to work with the Jerry Clay English Hub as a Graduated School, taking part in the Early Language and Ambition for All programmes. 

Implementation

Our school follows the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme with fidelity.

Foundations for phonics in Reception - 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.
• Our phonics leader works closely with the onsite nursery to ensure chlidren 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.
• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:
• Children in Receptin 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 Phase 3 and 4 and are taught t read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.
• Children in Year 2, upon successful completion of Phase 5 Set 2 will move onto Little Wandle Fluency. 

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

• Any child who needs additional practice has Daily Keep-up sessions, led 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 Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Rapid Catch-Up programme to support these children in targeted groups. 

Reading Sessions

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

• Are taught by a fully trained adult in small groups of approximately five 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. 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. Reading sessions continue in Year 1.

In Year 2 and above, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading, using the 7+ Rapid Catch-Up books. 

Some children in KS2 access the Little Wandle Fluency books to build confidence reading with speed and accuracy. 

Home reading

• Children take home the decodable book which they have been reading in school. This is an opportunity for children to share and celebrate reading success with their parents/carers. 
• Children visit the school library once a week and choose a reading for pleasure book to take home.
• Children are encouraged to aim for green, following our traffic light system at reading at home more than three times a week.
• 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.

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 Queensway and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
• Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading.
• In Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their choosing time and the books are continually refreshed.
• All children have a reading record book which they take home. These are used to communicate with parents/carers about their childs progress in reading. 
• As the children progress through the school, they are encouraged to write their own comments and keep a list of the books/authors that they have read.
• Children in Reception and KS1 have the opportunity to visit the local library and school story bus.

Impact

Assessment of phonics

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 who need immediate support. 
• Weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

Summative assessment is used:

• Every six weeks to assess progress and identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed through Daily Keep-Up sessions.
• By SLT monitoring attainment in phonics using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds analysis website, heatmaps and reading tracker.
• The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised placement assessment is used with any child new who joins school, to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and provide extra support.

Statutory assessment

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

Ongoing assessment for catch-up

Children in Year 2 to 6 are assessed through:

• Their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment
• The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds placement assessment and Rapid Catch-Up programme. 
• The appropriate half-termly assessments.
• Year groups will have end of term/year tests 

Further help and support is available here:

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/