At Wath Central Primary School we are passionate about reading. Our aim is for every child to be a reader by the end of Key Stage 1, inspiring a lifelong love of reading.
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Early reading skills are taught from Foundation 1, with the aim of giving children a love of books and storytelling. In the Foundation Stage children are exposed to diverse range of texts that we refer to as our Super Six books. The children are taught book skills and
the texts are explored together developing questioning, and prediction skills.
​Phonics
At Central we provide the stepping stones for early reading through quality teaching of phonics. This involves children learning to hear and identify sounds (phonemes) present in the English language and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.
Our teaching of phonics is underpinned by the ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ scheme which is delivered at FS2 and Y1. These children have daily phonics sessions where they learn how to use these phonemes to blend together the sounds to read a word and how to segment a word into the phonemes in order to spell it. All lesson follow a four part format which includes a Revisit –Teach -Practice-Apply model and use a variety of engaging strategies. Phonics is closely monitored beyond Y1 and the phonics screening so that children entering Y2 and KS2, who have significant gaps in their phonic knowledge, receive keep up interventions targeting their specific areas for development
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Phonics lessons are taught daily, with progress in phonics is closely monitored and reviewed frequently. Any additional support is quickly identified and interventions and keep-up sessions are put in place as needed. Children have access to a range of high quality, fully decodable phonics reading books in school and the same ebooks to use at home.
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Sharing books
The teaching of phonics is also supported with the use of phonics reading books which we closely match to each child’s reading ability and phonic knowledge. These are shared at school in group reading sessions and then the same texts are assigned to them via an online e-library so they can access them at home. There are three groups reading sessions each week, covering decoding, prosody and comprehension.
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Parent Involvement
In order to maximise the learning of phonics and early reading skills we encourage parent involvement right from Foundation Stage. Meetings to discuss what phonics is and how we teach this enable parents to support children at home and maximise learning. We also hold phonics workshops for parents who are invited in to take part in phonics activities, see what we do and also take ideas they can use at home.
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Further information for parents about Little Wandle Letters and Sounds can be found on the following website: https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ and using the documents and videos using the buttons below
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Useful Links
Top tips for supporting reading at home https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/
https://www.worldbookday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Share-a-Million-Stories-Top-Tips.pdf
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/parents/ten-tips-on-hearing-your-child-read
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/books-and-reading/tips-and-advice/
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Useful Little Wandle Phase Information
