Phonics Doesn't Stop......

At Weeke Primary School we fully appreciate and understand that to enable our children to learn to read with fluency and automaticity, phonics needs to become part of the daily diet children use to help them read and understand language, We also know that for some children grasping the depth of knowledge and understanding goes beyond the Year 1 classroom. For this reason, we ensure that our children are taught and encouraged to use their phonics in all their reading. 

Alongside the integration of phonics the children learn a range of skills and understanding in reading fluency and comprehension, which leads to excellent outcomes at the end of Key Stage 2 and a love of reading that continues when they leave for their next stage in education.

How are the children in Year 2-6 taught?

The Year 2 Reading curriculum is responsive to the needs of the cohort and transitions from the Little Wandle Phonics to the Little Wandle Fluency Programme.

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.

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 and use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge. 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

Little Wandle SEN(D) Programme

Pupils who have been identified as benefitting from this programme (for example, pupils who are not making sufficient progress through the Little Wandle Rapid catch Up intervention) are diverted on to the SEN(D) programme.

Whole Class Teaching of Reading

Whole Class Reading is taught daily for 30 minutes in Year 3 and 4 and for 30-40 minutes in Year 5 and 6.   In the main, the text drivers for the English journey are used.  Each week the sessions are as follows -

In Years 3 and 4:

• 2 x fluency

• 2 x focused reading skill

• 1 x Big Picture ( minimum fortnightly)  / Book Talk or library based session

In Years 5 and 6:

• 3 x  focused reading skill

• 1 x fluency

• 1 x Big Picture

Fluency session:

We develop reading fluency through a number of strategies including whole class teaching of fluency.  The fluency focus session will focus on a short extract and aspect of fluency teaching (see Fountas and Pinnell’s 6 dimensions of fluency).  Strategies such as echo reading, repeat reading , choral reading and  text marking  are used, practised and taught.  An ‘I do, we do, you do’ approach is used.  Aspects of fluency are also incorporated into other reading sessions.

Focused Reading Skills

There are eight focused reading skill areas taught:

Each focused reading skill session will focus on one of these skills.  Each skill- based session follows the same format:

1) Introduction to strategy

2) Recapping of text so far

3) Pre-teaching of selected vocabulary ( word, synonyms, picture, word in sentence from the text)

4) Read text extract - model

5) Teacher to explicitly model and teach focused reading skill - talking through their thinking out loud

6) Further Reading (where appropriate)

7) Snapshot Question recording and challenge question

8) Feedback

Big Picture Sessions

Big Picture sessions provide the opportunity for pupils to independently practise applying reading skills.  More than one reading skill is usually applied using a range of question frames.  Teachers may choose to model approaches or answers to identified questions.

Sticker Reads

So that all pupils are reading a text well matched to their reading ability, all pupils beyond phonics teaching are allocated a sticker read ‘colour’.  Sticker reads are organised by phase and colours.

Identified pupils working below ARE (Age Related Expectation) are PM benchmarked at least termly to support book banded sticker reads from purple to lime.   

Support for children in Reading

We want every child at Weeke Primary to have the independence, confidence and resilience to learn to read. We know that the work we do with all the children enables them to be highly successful in their reading journey. Sometimes to achieve this children need additional teaching and guidance. The information below outlines what we do to support children in Years 3-6 with their reading.

Assessment in Reading

Assessing pupils learning throughout the learning journey as well as at specific points in their learning is essential to enabling the child to progress in their reading or require a little more guidance. Below outlines our approach in KS2 to assessment.