Ash Hill Primary School

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Reading & Phonics

Reading and Phonics at Ash Hill Primary School

At Ash Hill, we are driven by teaching children the skills of reading to ensure that they are able to access the curriculum fully and confidently, develop a love of reading and are equipped for their future learning and life. To be able to read fluently and independently is, in our view, one of the most important skills that we can give to our school community.

From early phonics to UKS2, dedicated reading lessons guide children from the matching of sounds to letters through to the skills of decoding, reading fluency and comprehension for all children. We want every child at Ash Hill to grow into a confident reader and we aim to achieve this through quality teaching and additional support where necessary as well as a thriving and inviting library.

By focusing not only on reading (or decoding) words and sentences, we believe that unlocking the meaning, origins and creativity of words has the power to open doors to learning and success in life beyond the Ash Hill school gates.

Our core aims are:

  1. Develop Proficient Readers:

Ensure that all pupils develop strong phonic skills through systematic and explicit phonics instruction, enabling them to decode words, comprehend texts, and develop a love for reading.

  1. Inspire a Love for Reading:

Foster enthusiasm for reading by providing a diverse range of high-quality literature across genres, cultures, and topics, encouraging pupils to choose their reading material and share their recommendations.

  1. Promote Reading for Pleasure:

Cultivate a school environment that values and prioritises reading, featuring regular opportunities for independent reading and shared reading. Reading experiences are enhanced by reading-themed days alongside in-person and online poet and author visits.

  1. Reading as a mirror and a window to our community:

Tailor our reading and phonics curriculum to meet the specific needs and interests of our local community in Micklefield and High Wycombe including those with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Pupils see themselves and their families represented in the books and reading materials on offer and also explore new worlds and opportunities through them too.

  1. Meet the needs of children with SEND:

To plan, adapt and teach to purposefully serve the differing learning needs of our children, ensuring inclusivity for all learners and developing independent readers with the necessary skills and confidence.

Implementation

Our reading and phonics strategy is underpinned by a carefully structured framework that includes:

  1. High-Quality Phonics Instruction: We utilise a validated phonics programme that is consistent and progressive, focusing on cumulative learning. Early years and Key Stage 1 classes have daily phonics sessions that are engaging and differentiated to meet the diverse needs and abilities of all learners.
  2. Reading across the Curriculum: Reading is firmly embedded across the curriculum. Subject areas complement reading development by integrating high-quality texts that relate to geography, history, science and R.E which allows children to reinforce comprehension and vocabulary skills in different contexts.
  3. Poetry performances: Every class learns a different poem on a termly basis, reading and practising it closely together. The poem is then performed in assembly in front of other year groups benefitting reading fluency and performance.
  4. Professional Development for Staff: Continuous professional development ensures that teaching staff are well-equipped with the latest strategies and methodologies in phonics and reading. Regular training sessions focus on the implementation of the phonics programme, along with sharing best practices in reading instruction.
  5. Reading Ambassadors and Engagement: We engage pupils as reading ambassadors, encouraging them to promote reading within the school community through initiatives such as reading challenges and mentoring, managing the library and supporting reading-themed events.

Our Reading Spine

To ensure we can develop the essential reading skills as well as foster a lifelong passion for reading at Ash Hill, we have developed our own set of core ‘read aloud’ stories, non-fiction texts and poems for each year group. We have selected a range of high-quality texts that reflect a variety of themes, settings, characters and language from a diverse range of countries and cultures. With both classic and modern texts, fiction and non-fiction extracts to stimulate comparison and discussion, we have been guided by the recommendations of reading experts and the Reading Framework 2023 in curating our reading spine.

Staff are encouraged to suggest books and contribute texts from their own reading as they themselves represent powerful role models as reader teachers. The core reading list is refreshed regularly as exciting, new books are published and to reflect the changing nature of our school community. Some texts will be used as the focus for reading and writing lessons while others are shared for pleasure in our daily story time.

 

 

 

 

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”

Rudine Sims Bishop, American author

P

Intent

Phonics (reading and spelling)

At Ash Hill, we believe that all our children will become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

At Ash Hill, we 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.

Little Wandle has a great section on their website for parents.  Click here to see how we say the sounds and how we teach them.  The videos will give you more information.

 

Comprehension

At Ash Hill, we value reading as a crucial life skill. By the time children leave us, they read confidently for meaning and regularly enjoy reading for pleasure. Our readers are equipped with the tools to tackle unfamiliar vocabulary. We encourage our children to see themselves as readers for both pleasure and purpose.

Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading and Phonics Leader who drives the early reading programme in our school. They monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.

 

Implementation

Daily phonics lessons

We teach phonics daily. 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 Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

 

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

Any child who needs additional practice has daily keep-up support, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.

Teaching reading in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Children: Reading practice sessions 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
  • use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments and book matching grids on pages 11–20 of ‘Application of phonics to reading’
  • are monitored by the class teacher, who rotates and works with each group on a regular basis.

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.

 

In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Children who are not yet decoding have daily additional blending practice in small groups, so that they quickly learn to blend and can begin to read books.

In Year 2 and 3, we continue to teach reading in this way for any children who still need to practise reading with decodable books.

 

Home reading in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2

Reading book - The decodable reading practice book that the children have been reading in school, is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.

Sharing book - Reading for pleasure books also go home for parents to share and read to children.  These are library books chosen by the children.

  

Additional reading support for vulnerable children

  • Some children read their reading practice book to an adult daily.

 

Ensuring consistency and pace of progress

  • Every teacher in our school has been trained to teach reading, so we have the same expectations of progress. We all use the same language, routines and resources to teach children to read so that we lower children’s cognitive load.
  • Weekly content grids map each element of new learning to each day, week and term for the duration of the programme.
  • Lesson templates, Prompt cards and How to videos ensure teachers all have a consistent approach and structure for each lesson.
  • The Reading Leader and SLT use the Audit and Prompt cards to regularly monitor and observe teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and gaps in learning.

 

Ensuring reading for pleasure

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002)

‘The will influences the skill and vice versa.’ (OECD 2010)

 

We value reading for pleasure highly and work hard as a school to grow our Reading for Pleasure pedagogy.

  • We read to children every day. We choose these books carefully as we want children to experience a wide range of books, including books that reflect the children at Ash Hill and our local community as well as books that open windows into other worlds and cultures.
  • Every classroom has an inviting book corner that encourages a love for reading. We curate these books and talk about them to entice children to read a wide range of books.
  • In Reception, children have access to the reading corner every day in their free flow time and the books are continually refreshed.
  • We visit the local library and have assemblies promoting the use of the library.
  • The school library is made available for classes to use at protected times. Children across the school have regular opportunities to engage with a wide range of Reading for Pleasure events (book fairs, author visits and workshops, national events etc).

 

 

Impact

Assessment

Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.

 

Assessment for learning is used:

  • daily within class to identify children needing keep-up support
  • weekly in the Review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.

 

Summative assessment is used:

  • every six weeks to assess progress, to identify gaps in learning that need to be addressed, to identify any children needing additional support and to plan the keep-up support that they need.

The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised placement assessment is used:

  • with any child new to the school to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and plan provide appropriate extra teaching.

 

Statutory assessment

Children in Year 1 sit the Phonics screening check. Any child not passing the check re-sits it in Year 2.

 

Ongoing assessment for catch-up

Children in Year 2 to 6 are assessed through:

  • their teacher’s ongoing formative assessment
  • the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds placement assessment
  • the appropriate half-termly assessments.