Phonics and EARLY Reading

Phonics and Reading

For guidance on how to support with Phonics at home, you can access the Little Wandle's website here. This has a range of resources, videos and helpful guides about the teaching of phonics and early reading.

At Kingsham, we teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers. We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:

Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Year 1:

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.

Any child who needs additional practice has daily 'Keep-up' support, taught by a 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.

Early Reading using phonics is also taught in EYFS and Year 1 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 using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments.

Year 2 and Beyond:
Rapid catch-up phonics lessons are used 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.

How You Can Help:

Read at Home: Your child will bring home books to practise their reading.
Stay Involved: We’ll keep you updated on your child’s progress and share tips to support reading at home.

Reading Practice

This book your child brings home has been carefully matched to their current reading level. If your child is reading it with little help, please don’t worry that it’s too easy – your child needs to develop fluency and confidence in reading. Listen to them read the book. Remember to give them lots of praise – celebrate their success! If they can’t read a word, read it to them. After they have finished, talk about the book together.

'Share With Me' book

To encourage your child to become a lifelong reader, it is important that they learn to read for pleasure. The sharing book is a book they have chosen for you to enjoy together.

Please remember that you shouldn’t expect your child to read this alone. Read it to or with them. Discuss the pictures, enjoy the story, predict what might happen next, use different voices for the characters, explore the facts in a non-fiction book. The main thing is that you have fun!

There are a range of other resources you can access from the menu on the right-hand side.

Useful websites: