Phonics at White Rock

Please click the following link if you would like to further support your child's development in Phonics at home:

For parents | Letters and Sounds (littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk)

INTENT

At White Rock Primary School, we firmly believe that all of our children can become fluent readers.

As a school we follow the planning from Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised which is a Department for Education validated systematic and synthetic phonics programme. The programme ensures that children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

Phonics is the first direct teaching for this which starts in our Early Years. Children in our Nursery participate in planned speaking and listening activities that are matched to their developing needs. These sessions are based around Phase 1 phonics which ensures children are able to discriminate between sounds. The sessions are taken from the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised planning tool which is also used through the rest of the school.

In Reception and Year One, children follow the daily planning from Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. The children access daily sessions as whole class and then targeted follow up to work to support and challenge all children in our school.

Phonics is weaved across the curriculum at White Rock. As well as daily Phonics sessions, the children also access reading sessions, guided writing sessions as well as planned Continuous Provision activities to further cement the learning. We have a strong focus on language development for our children because we understand that vocabulary, speaking and listening are crucial skills for reading and writing in all subjects. Children who require additional support for this are identified early and appropriate intervention is then put in place.

At White Rock we are committed to ensure that every child learns to read fluently so that they have skills not only to access the rest of the curriculum but also to ensure they are able to read for both purpose and pleasure. A rigorous and consistent approach to Phonics from all staff is essential to support our children effectively.

Little Wandle Phonics Teaching

At White Rock:

• We ensure that all pupils benefit from a consistent and systematic approach to the teaching of phonics from entry to school
• Each phonic session follows the structure set out by Little Wandle with all adults following the planning format. 
• We ensure all pupils access daily lessons and then specific catch up work is tailored to individual children's needs. The follow up is fast and directed to gaps to ensure children do not fall behind. 
• All pupils enjoy a consistent approach to Phonics teaching which reduces cognitive load and aims to develop fluent confident readers.
• Agreed language from the Little Wandle planning formats is used in every session. 
• All children fully engaged in the discreet teaching phonic sessions and have regular access to high quality teaching which secures both the crucial skills of word recognition, enabling children to read fluently, allowing them to concentrate on the meaning of the text and to have secured the automatic decoding skills
• Pupils are supported to pass the phonic screening check in Year 1 and to make at least expected progress from their starting point (if children pass their phonic screen they should achieve the expected standard in both Reading and Writing).
• Pupils are taught to apply their phonic knowledge and skills to both their reading and writing

PHONIC PHASES THROUGHOUT EDUCATION

Phase One (Nursery)

Phonic Knowledge and Skills

Activities are divided into seven aspects, including environment sounds, instrumental sounds, body sounds, rhythm and rhyme, alliteration, voice sounds and finally oral blending and segmenting.

Phase Two (Reception) 

Phonic Knowledge and Skills

Learning 19 letters of the alphabet and one sound or each. Blending sounds together to make words. Segmenting words into their separate sounds. Beginning to read simple caption.

Phase Three (Reception)

The remaining 7 letters of the alphabet, one sound for each. Graphemes such as ch, oo, th representing the remaining phonemes not covered by single letters. Reading captions, sentences and questions. On completion of this phase, children will have learnt the “simple code”, i.e. one grapheme for each phoneme in the English language.

Phase Four (Reception) 

No new grapheme-phoneme correspondences are taught in this phase Children learn to blend and segment longer words with the adjacent consonants, e.g swim, clap, jump.

Phase Five (Throughout Year 1)

Now we move on to the “complex code”. Children learn graphemes for the phonemes which they already know, plus different ways of pronouncing the graphemes they already know.

Phase six (Throughout Year 2 and beyond)

Working on spelling, including prefixes and suffixes, doubling and dropping letters etc.

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Further information on the Little Wandle Website 

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/ 

The resources on this page will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters. There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home. 

The page provides you with access to yearly overviews, videos how to pronounce the sounds correctly and information on books that your child will read at home.