Phonics

Phonics

At Riverbridge we use Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised to teach phonics. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a systematic synthetic phonics scheme based on the original Letters and Sounds programme. Teaching of phonics begins in the foundation stage and strategies for learning phonics are applied consistently throughout the school to support children. There are clear keep up strategies to support children who are identified as requiring additional support to ensure they do not fall behind with their phonics learning. 

Foundations for Phonics in Nursery

• 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.

We ensure Nursery children are well-prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception, using resources from the Little Wandle Foundation for Phonics Programme. 

 

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 (see link below).

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 to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

 

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

• Any child who needs additional practice has daily Keep-up support, taught 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 or 3 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 assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace. 
• If any child in Year 3 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we plan phonics ‘catch-up’ lessons to address specific reading/writing gaps. These short, sharp lessons last 10 minutes and take place at least three times a week.

For information about what is taught in each phase of letters and sounds please see the Programme Overview document below.    You will also find a Parent PowerPoint with more information for parents of children in Reception and Year 1. 

There are also useful videos below to help with supporting your child at home as well as a link to the parents’ page on the Little Wandle website.

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