Early Reading


Seven Areas of Early Reading


Reading underpins the learning in the foundation stage with communication and language at the heart of learning across all of the EYFS.   Communication and language is embedded into the setting through the areas of the provision and through the adults working and interacting at child level in order to achieve a good level of communication, interacting, questioning and understanding. 

Across the EYFS setting, children have access to reading areas which are developed to enhance the current learning linked to the topic being taught as well as other high quality texts with which the children are familiar. A range of new texts are also available. These books are changed regularly. Children have the opportunity to share books with friends and staff.

In Nursery and in the Autumn term of Reception, keyworker inputs are based around the development of communication and language in order to develop the skills and vocabulary needed to allow children to progress onto the early stages of reading.

The children receive a ‘Book for Bedtime’, which they are encouraged to change regularly to share with their parent/guardian at home. In Nursery, children then mark make about the story in their journal.

Once the children are in Reception, parents have access to their focused reading book on-line through their dedicated Collins Little Wandle login. Staff upload this book every Friday for parents to read at home.

At Rose Wood, we use Little Wandle, Letters and Sounds Revised programme. Phonics is taught daily in both Nursery and Reception and ongoing professional discussions and regular assessments allow the monitoring of individual development and progress.

 

Prioritise Reading

The quality of reading provision and early reading is of high priority within the school. Reading and literature is at the heart of the curriculum and a priority for pupils as soon as they start in nursery. Language and vocabulary is celebrated in the early years’ environment and practitioners take every opportunity to develop this.

 

The Early Years has a clear reading ‘diet’, to which all pupils are exposed. This includes rhymes, traditional stories, ‘Power of Reading’ texts and other carefully chosen texts. There is explicit, daily teaching of synthetic phonics using the systematic Little Wandle scheme with clear milestones for expectations to ensure pupils are secure at every stage of their early reading development and working towards becoming fluent readers.

 

The quality of the provision is regularly scrutinised and evaluated to ensure consistent high standards.  The approaches to developing early reading are well informed by this scrutiny as well as external sources and research.  The school has good outcomes for reading which is evidence that the early reading approach is working but it still remains a high priority as the principal and staff all know it is of the highest importance to underpin learning.  Staff are held to account for the quality of reading provision, including a focus on early reading. Staff are supported with appropriate CPD to ensure that they are highly skilled in teaching reading and early reading. SLT ensure that the school is well resourced with the appropriate books and additional resources to deliver reading.

 

All children are celebrated and the confidence and self-esteem gained allows all pupils to see themselves as readers. Phonics assessments are used to track progress and identify gaps. Leaders have a clear understanding of the children who are falling behind and the interventions are in place to enable the children to catch up. This is a focus of pupil progress meetings.

 

Phonics is taught daily with additional catch up sessions for any children falling behind. It is our strong belief that all children can be readers and our provision reflects this belief.

 

Reading expectations are well communicated with parents and support is given to families to help them with their reading practice at home with their children. 

Love of Reading

We always look for innovative ways to engage children and parents with reading. Reading has a high profile as soon as children come into school in order to promote a love of reading. In Nursery, children are read to at least twice a session and, in Reception, children are read to every day, at least once but often more frequently.

 

The ‘Power of Reading’ underpins our curriculum from Nursery upwards, giving children access to quality texts and providing opportunities to develop book talk. Time is planned into the timetable to allow opportunities for children to talk about their favourite books and children in Reception are able to vote for the book selected as their end of day text.  

 

Books are promoted throughout the setting- in reading areas and in provision areas – and children are invited into the areas to listen to stories as well as encouraged to go in and share books independently. Books in the reading area are selected carefully and include books which are familiar to the children as they were the books read by adults to the children in the previous half term.  A core reading spine of texts has been carefully selected to ensure that children experience a range of quality literature, including stories and rhymes as well as choices being made which appeal to their interests. Adults in the setting are supported to be engaging and exciting storytellers and, as a result, children can be heard using expression and intonation in their own storytelling.

 

The environment in the Early Years celebrates reading with displays that celebrate pupils’ own book making, as well as documenting the books children have read together and explored through the ‘Power of Reading’. Puppet areas across Early Years, at different points in the year, promote children bringing known texts alive and they’re encouraged to develop their own imaginative storytelling using different characters.

 

The children’s love of reading is developed further through the fact that all children are taken to the library where they are encouraged to get their own library card and are started on the path to become lifelong readers.

Programme and

Progress

We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching the foundations of phonics in Nursery and then follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression in Reception, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

As a result, all our children are able to tackle any unfamiliar words as they read. At Rose Wood Academy, we also 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.

At Rose Wood Academy, we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and enjoy reading for pleasure. We ensure that this happens by prioritising reading from the very beginning of their journey with us. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose. Any children who haven’t achieve our reading expectations are targeted. We timetable additional ‘catch up’ phonics and reading sessions for any child in Year 2 or above who is not yet fully fluent at reading and we are relentless in our belief that everyone can be a fluent reader.

Book Match Sounds

We teach children to read through reading practice sessions. These are taught by a trained adult to small groups of approximately 6 children.

The books we use are matched closely to the children’s secure phonic knowledge. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids to do this.

Children receive a login for the Collins eBooks site so they are able to read the decodable practice book at home.

We have invested in the Collins decodable books for all the phases and these are directly linked to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised programme.

Phonics from the Start

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 Phases 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Catch up Quickly

The children are assessed formally every half term using the Little Wandle on-line assessment. These assessments allow us to identify specifically the areas of difficulty a child may have.  However, any child who is identified during the daily phonics sessions as falling behind immediately receives additional practice through ‘Keep-Up’ sessions. Daily Keep-up sessions ensure every child learns to read. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition.

 

Any children not reading fluently by the end of Year 1 or any children who have not passed the Phonics Screening check are assessed and placed on the Little Wandle Rapid Catch-up programme. The Little Wandle Rapid catch up programme and resources are used to teach at pace. These short sharp lessons have been designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading.

 

We use:

the Rapid Catch-up initial assessment to quickly identify any gaps in phonic knowledge and plan appropriate teaching

the Rapid Catch-up summative assessments to assess progress and inform teaching

the Rapid Catch-up fluency assessments when children are reading the Phase 5 set 3, 4 and 5 books.

 

The fluency assessments measure children’s accuracy and reading speed in short one-minute assessments. They also assess when children are ready to exit the Rapid Catch-up programme, which is possible when they read the final fluency assessment at 90+ words per minute.

Early Reading Experts

 

Every teacher and teaching assistant in our school has been trained to teach reading, so we have the same expectations of progress and the appropriate subject knowledge. We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load. School Improvement meetings are used to share good practice and CPD is offered in response to any issues that arise from monitoring and feedback from staff.  We closely follow the training materials from Little Wandle and support on their website is used regularly by staff teaching early reading to ensure that their practice is the very best it can be.

The Reading Leader and SLT regularly monitor teaching and learning, offering support where needed. Our Early Reading leader also offers support on our approach to the teaching of Early Reading so parents can best support their children at home.

 

 

 

Phonics Documents

Updated: 10/02/2023 958 KB
Phonics and Early Reading Policy
Updated: 22/09/2022 546 KB
Little Wandle Teaching Overview