Phonics & Reading

Subject Leader: Siobhan Robinson

Early Reading

At Woodhouse Primary Academy we aim to foster a love of reading amongst our children from the day they join us. We have a planned reading spine across school for each year group which is a range of texts and poetry shared across the year.

At Woodhouse Primary Academy, your child will be given a home reading book that matches the reading book they are accessing in school. This helps ensure that the book they are reading at home is the right reading level for them. We use the Reading scheme Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds so that they will experience a range of stories, text types and illustrations.

All books within EYFS and KS1 are fully decodable using phonics skills and knowledge linked to our scheme. Children have experienced these books several times in school before they come home so should be confident and fluent readers.

In Key Stage 2, if children have not completed the Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds they will be placed on Rapid Catch Up. They will continue to use books matched to a child’s reading ability and Phonics they have been reading. We ask parents to support children at Key Stage 2 with their comprehension and demonstrating what they have understood about the book they have read. Our children also access Reading Plus to support with the development of fluency and comprehension. 

Reading for Pleasure

We have a fully stocked Library using World of Story books. World of Stories is a programme developed in partnership with Puffin, part of Penguin Random House. The programme equips primary schools with the books, materials, training and resources they need to champion reading for pleasure across the whole school. Children are encouraged to change their books regularly from the Library. Children will bring reading books and high frequency words home weekly and encourage families to share books with their child and ask for a comment in their reading record. In EYFS and Key Stage 1 these are books to be shared and enjoyed with your child they are not aimed at children reading them independently. Read them, enjoy them and talk about them. At Key Stage 2 the focus is on children developing their independent love of reading across a range of authors so children can access these independently.

From Reception, children have a home reading book set to their level from the Little Wandle Phonics. These books are changed every Monday and are taken home to be shared with their parents. All children are asked to continue learning unknown High Frequency Words and read at least three times weekly including accessing Reading Plus at Key Stage 2 using their individual log ins.

In order to support wider reading we have invested significantly in quality engaging texts for our children and these are freely available in class reading areas and the whole school library area which children can access at break and lunch times. 

Phonics

The importance of reading for children cannot be underestimated. Reading for pleasure can benefit a child’s education, social and cognitive development, their wellbeing, and their mental health. At Woodhouse Primary School, Early Reading is taught using synthetic Phonics as the main approach to reading. Children are systematically taught the phonemes (sounds), how to blend the sounds all through the word for reading, and how to segment the sounds in order to write words. They are taught to use their phonic skills and knowledge as their first approach to reading. Alongside Phonics teaching, the children are taught high frequency words which do not completely follow the phonetic rules to support fluent reading.

At Woodhouse Primary School we firmly believe that good phonics teaching is at the heart of successful early reading and writing experiences. All staff are trained in the Little Wandle Programme, children are taught Phonics first daily and is a priority in our school. This teaching begins for our very youngest children in Nursery who follow Little Wandle’s Foundations to Phonics Programme. The children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are assessed every 5 weeks to evaluate how much the child has learnt and make adjustments as needed.

Support for parents can be found using the following link 

Reading Support

At Woodhouse Primary Academy, through frequent assessment, we rapidly identify pupils who would benefit from further support with reading, to ensure that these children do not fall behind. We do this with:

• Keep up and Catch up phonics sessions
• 1:1 Reading
• Little Wandle Revised Letters and Sounds SEND programme for children where appropriate
• In school interventions
• Referrals to outside agencies for support and assessment where appropriate