Spring Vale Primary School Wolverhampton

Reading & Phonics

Phonics

We teach phonics through the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised phonics programme. Phonics is introduced informally in Nursery by children taking part in pre-reading activities, including singing nursery rhymes, listening to, and identifying different sounds around them, clapping rhythms and listening to stories, helping to immerse children in a language rich environment, right from the beginning of their learning journey. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is taught daily in Reception and Year 1 and revisited in Year Two before leading into the Little Wandle Spelling programme. Any children in Reception and Year One who begin to fall behind in phonics immediately begin ‘Keep Up’ intervention and children from Year Two onwards are given ‘Rapid Catch Up’ intervention if needed. Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised draws on the latest research into how children learn best; how to ensure learning stays in children’s long-term memory and how best to enable children to apply their learning to become highly competent readers.

Click here for videos of how we teach your child phonics and for useful worksheets to support at home.

Reading

At Spring Vale Primary, we firmly believe that reading should be fun and not a chore. Children have lots of opportunities to read in school throughout the day. There are books, magazines, children’s newspapers, comics, and online reading texts available in class, the library and on the playground during break times. All children have exposure to a variety of texts as a part of their school day in a range of ways, including reading for pleasure, library sessions - in our own library or our local one, class activities and Book Babble sessions.

Our Book Babble sessions use texts from our year group Book Spine Recommended Reads and engage children in a diverse range of fiction, non-fiction and poetry appropriate for their age.

We teach phonics using Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Phonics Scheme. This is taught daily in small groups in Reception and Key Stage One. See above for further information and the parents’ link to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.

In Reception and Year One, children experience group Guided Reading sessions with an adult, learning how to read fluently, with expression and understanding, using phonically decodable books. After reading these in class, the texts are available as online readers for children to access at home. Children in Year Two onwards have Guided Reading sessions and Shared Reading sessions, as appropriate, to help develop higher level reading skills.

Literacy lessons are text-based, and all classes have a selection of focus texts which they study throughout the year. These range from nursery rhymes and traditional tales to Macbeth, depending on the age of the children. Have a look at the class pages to see what the texts are for each year group!

We encourage pupils to read at home every day and ask parents to sign their reading diary to say that they have heard their child read.

Children in Foundation and Year One bring home a Shared Reader. These books are a similar level to their decodable guided reading books, but the focus is to share them at home, with the adult reading the trickier words, while spending time together discussing and understanding the text. Children in Year two onwards bring home a Home Reader to read at home. These texts are to help promote a love of reading and are a mixture of genres. In addition to this, children have a library book that is free choice. Your child also has a Collins eBooks account which enables them to access additional reading books online.

Reading Leader - Mrs K West

Below are some ideas of how to support your child’s reading at home…