Phonics

"A love of reading is the biggest indicator of future academic success."

- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

At Meadows, we use 'Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised' as our scheme for the teaching and learning of Phonics. Little Wandle is the fastest growing Department for Education-validated phonics programme, already supporting over 5,000 schools to teach every child to learn to read!

The intent of Phonics at Meadows

At Meadows, we aspire for all our children to become fluent readers and writers who can aspire, grow and flourish across our curriculum offer. To achieve this, we aim for our children to:

Build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
Be equipped to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read.
Read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure.
See themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.
Be taught through fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

The implementation of Phonics at Meadows:

We teach a synthetic phonics programme.
We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression.
We model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside of the phonics lesson and across the curriculum.
We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we know that speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects.

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.

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 Reception 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.

Teaching reading

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

are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups of approximately six 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.

In Year 2 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

Home reading

The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family. Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.

Assessment of Phonics at Meadows:

Children’s progress in phonics is continually reviewed through assessment. This 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 needing Keep-up 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, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Keep-up support that they need.
By SLT and scrutinised through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessment tracker, to narrow attainment gaps between different groups of children and so that any additional support for teachers can be put into place.
The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised placement assessment is used with any child new to the school to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and plan provide appropriate extra teaching.

Statutory assessment

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics screening check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2. We provide an annual workshop for Parents and Carers to support their understanding of this process.

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 the appropriate half-termly assessments.

Pure Sounds - Helpful Videos

Resources for Parents

Phase 2 Sounds taught in Autumn 1 of Reception

Phase 2 Sounds taught in Autumn 2 of Reception

Phase 3 Sounds taught in Reception Spring 1

Phase 5 Sounds taught in Year 1

Tricky Words

Alongside each phase of our Phonics Programme, we teach tricky words. Tricky words cannot be read or spelt using our knowledge of our sounds as they do not follow the rules. We identify these as tricky words and ‘notice’ the tricky bit in our teaching and learning.

Below are tricky words which your child will learn in school.

reception tricky words.pdf

year one tricky words.pdf

To support your child's learning of tricky words:

Tracing, copying and writing of tricky words in various media will increase recall.
Put tricky words on word strips and, each day, move them through three containers labelled ‘words I’m learning’, ‘words I know’ and ‘word bank’, as the child correctly reads them.
Play ‘Mix and Fix’: make the tricky word with magnetic letters or letter tiles, check it with a model, then mix the letters up and fix them up again. Repeat!
Play ‘Word Detective’: show a tricky word written on a whiteboard and ask the child to read and orally spell the word. Turn the board away and erase a letter. Show the child and ask them to identify the missing letter. The missing letter should then be written in again.
Create meaningful opportunities for your child to read or write his tricky words in sentences. Play memory games such as Snap, Concentration, Bingo or Go Fish with tricky words on cards. Hangman is a particularly effective game for letter sequence recall in tricky words.
On Education City for EYFS play ‘Match me if you can’ and ‘I See Words’. On Education City for Year One, play ‘Ready or Not’, ‘Sten and Klara’s Sports Day’, ‘Stig’s Tree Adventure’ and ‘Toy Museum’.

Letter Formation

Here are some resources to support parents and carers with their child's letter formation:

handwriting map.pdf

little wandle letter formation.pdf

How to Form Capital Letters Written Guide

The Impact of Phonics at Meadows

Quality teaching of Phonics at Meadows results in:

Children being able to master phonics to read and spell as they move through school.
Pupils becoming confident readers and developing this a crucial life skill
Pupils seeing themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose
Above local and national averages in the 2023 to 2024 Phonics Screen.
70% of our Year Sixes reaching 'above or expected' in the 2023 to 2024 SATs.