Phonics At Haddenham Junior School
Intent
At Haddenham Junior School, we teach phonics through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic synthetic phonics programme. The progression of the programme 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. For any child who is not at age-related expectations for reading, we use the Little Wandle Rapid Catch-up programme. We recognise that these children need urgent targeted support so that they can access the curriculum and enjoy reading as soon as possible. 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. Because we believe teaching every child to read is so important, we have a Reading Leader who drives the reading programme in our school. This person is highly skilled in the teaching of phonics and reading, and they monitor and support our reading team, so everyone teaches with fidelity to the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme.
Implementation
Teaching phonics: Rapid Catch-up
- We timetable daily phonics lessons for any child who is not reading at age-related expectations. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen.
- These daily 30 minute lessons and have been designed to ensure children quickly catch up to age-related expectations in reading
- We use the Rapid Catch-up assessments to quickly identify the needs of children who are new to our school, new to the country or new to English.
- We use the Rapid Catch-up assessments to identify the gaps in children’s phonic knowledge and teach these using the Rapid Catch-up resources – at pace.
- We assess children every four weeks using the Rapid Catch-up summative assessments to assess progress and inform teaching.
- We teach reading practice sessions three times a week to children receiving Rapid Catch-up. These sessions:
- Are taught by a fully trained adult to small groups or individual children
- use books matched to the children’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised Rapid Catch-up assessments and book matching grids
- Are monitored by the class teacher.
- 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: teaching children to use phonic knowledge to read words
- prosody: teaching children to read with understanding and expression
- comprehension: using dialogic talk to help children to understand the text
- Children read each book along with the teacher over the course of the reading lessons to develop phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension as well as book behaviours.
- Reading in Rapid Catch-up lessons mirrors the core programme. Children following the Rapid Catch-up programme are taught to read using the 7+ fully decodable books. These follow the same progression as the core programme but are more appropriate for older readers.
Reading at home
- The decodable reading practice book is taken home to ensure success is shared with the family.
- Reading for Pleasure (RfP) books also go home for parents to share and read to children.
- We use the Little Wandle parents’ resources to engage our families and share information about phonics, the benefits of sharing books, how children learn to blend and other aspects of our provision, both online and through workshops.
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 planning 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 checklists and templates to regularly monitor and observe teaching; they use the summative data to identify children who need additional support and have gaps in learning.
Impact
Assessment: Rapid Catch-up
Assessment is used to monitor progress and to identify any child needing additional support as soon as they need it.
- Assessment for Learning (AfL) is used:
- Daily within class to identify children who require Rapid Catch-up, as well as words and GPCs that need additional teaching
- To plan repeated practice throughout the day to ensure all children secure learning
- Weekly in the Wednesday review lesson to assess gaps, address these immediately and secure fluency of GPCs, words and spellings.
- An Initial Rapid Catch-up assessment is used with any child new to the school to quickly identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and to plan and provide appropriate extra teaching.
- Summative assessments are used:
- To generate visual reports for individual children
- By teachers, Reading Leaders and SLT who drill down and look at the data at GPC, word, tricky word and sentence level
- By SLT to scrutinise and plan how to narrow the attainment gaps between different groups of children and to put in place any additional support for teachers.
We assess:
- Every four weeks to assess progress and to identify gaps in learning that need to be reviewed or retaught
- To establish if learning is secure before new content is taught
- To identify any children needing additional support and to plan the Rapid Catch- up support that they need.
- Fluency assessments measure children’s accuracy and reading speed in short one- minute assessments. They are used to assess when children are ready to exit their programme*.
