Phonics and Reading Information

Phonics and Reading

“A love of reading is the biggest indicator of future academic success.”
(The organisation of Economic cooperation and development)

We are passionate about creating a learning environment that is rich with high quality texts that children are keen to listen to, share and enjoy. Our whole curriculum is led by books which help to create, enhance and inspire our topic themes. From these texts we pull out rich vocabulary each week to share with the children. We encourage them to use the extensive vocabulary that we develop in all aspects of their learning. 

Our school has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic, synthetic programme (SSP) to teach early reading and spelling. Phonics is making connections between the sounds of our spoken words and the letters that are used to write them down. 

Once your child begins Sunshines they begin learning letter sounds. These follow a specific systematic order.  The children learn 4 phonemes/digraphs per week and 2 or 3 Tricky words. The children are regularly assessed every 6 weeks. If they are not keeping up with the programme then they will receive daily intervention. 

Once we identify that your child is ready for a reading book the children begin reading in small groups 3 times per week. The children read the same book three times in a week. The first time we work on decoding (sounding out) the words, the second time we work on prosody which is reading with expression – making the book sound more interesting with our storyteller voice or our David Attenborough voice – and the third time we look at comprehension. We read the books three times at school because we want to develop the fluency. The more children see words, the more they begin to read them automatically without having to sound them out. 
We hold a phonics meeting for Parents in September to explain the programme and how you can support your child further.