English: Reading and Phonics

Phonics

Our Nursery pupils receive a daily 10 minute phonics session following the Little Wandle 'Foundations for Phonics' programme. Children focus on listening skills, segmenting and blending in preparation for reading letters and learning letter sounds within Phase 2 when they start school in reception.

Within Reception and Year 1, children access a focussed daily programme of phonics.  Lessons are led by both teachers and teaching assistants. Children are generally grouped by year group, however children who require more targetted learning may be grouped to support their educational needs. We run a SEND phonics programme and a Rapid Catch-up programme if required. If there are any children who are identified as falling behind, these children receive additional catch-up or Keep-up sessions. Assessments are completed every 6 weeks (and sometimes more frequently) to ensure we always have up to date information and are able to ensure children make rapid progress.

Until September 2023, the Little Wandle programme has predominently focussed on Reception and Year 1. However since September 2023, a new Y2 programme has been developed to incorporate a Phase 5 review, Bridge to Spelling programme and spelling programme. We are currently following this programme with our Y2 children. If there are any pupils who still require phonics in Y2 or beyond, we ensure we have provision to do this so that children continue to access the support they need. 

We use the DFE approved 'Little Wandle' Phonics scheme https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/ Little Wandle provides a complete, systematic synthetic phonics programme and uses high quality learning resources. To support our Little Wandle reading programme, we have six full sets of reading books to match the scheme, all of which are phonetically decodable. The children take home one phonetically decodable book along with a 'sharing book' for parents/carers to share with their children. All teachers and teaching assistants have now received the training for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds.  You can find resources for parents to help you support you child here:  https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Reading

Here at Woore, we consider ourselves to be a reading school. Early readers are supported through high quality phonics lessons which teach individual sounds, segmenting and blending. This is taught daily to embed the sounds, to ensure children have the foundations to become confident readers. As children enter KS2, there is an increased emphasis on reading comprehension skills. This is taught through the use of ‘VIPERS’ in guided reading sessions and discrete comprehension sessions.   At Woore we use the book banding system that starts following the successful completion of the Little Wandle programme.  This is where books are colour coded according to their difficulty. Books are phonetically decodable and include a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

Reading for Pleasure

Throughout school, reading is promoted in exciting and engaging ways. Each classroom has a calm and inviting space for reading, where children can access a range of high quality, carefully curated reading books. We have recently added to our class libraries new, popular reading books which are displayed prominently within classrooms. Children also have access to a range of non-fiction books, through the Shropshire Library Service, which change each term in line with the topics covered. At the heart of our school, we also have a dedicated non-fiction library, which enables children to independently explore topics of their choice or support learning within class. We have a trained  team of librarians who look after our library and support children across the school to sign out books to take home to read.. All teachers share stories with their class. We believe, that listening to stories and poetry and having the chance to discuss them is vital to a child’s growing appreciation of literature in all its forms.

Class 1 has their own special Reading Rabbit and Poetry Panda who travel home with the children in their special reading box, and of course, complete with a book, blanket and hot chocolate!

This autumn, the children have enjoyed their very own pumpkin patch reading area out on the playground, even when the weather is not at its best, we find a way to read with a hot cup of chocolate!!

Class 2 and Class 3 receive daily reading practice sessions that help develop skills in comprehension and prosody.  In these sessions we use questions based around VIPERS skills.

Files to Download