Early Reading and Phonics at Bedford Drive Primary School
Early Reading
At Bedford Drive Primary school we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of key stage one. We believe this is achievable through a combination of high quality, discrete systematic phonics teaching combined with fostering a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.
Being able to read is the most important skill children will learn during their early schooling and has far-reaching implications for lifelong learning and well-being. We understand how important early reading is here at Bedford Drive and, as such, we have introduced, ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’. This is a complete systematic, synthetic phonics programme which ensures high quality teaching, resources and assessments which promotes early reading and aids us in continuing to grow a love of reading amongst our pupils that compliments the high quality scheme of decodable reading books used throughout school ‘Collins Big Cat Phonics Books’.
Foundations for phonics in Nursery
We believe the importance of getting children off to a good start with reading cannot be overstated. The teaching of Early Reading starts from Nursery here at Bedford Drive.
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 and an attention to high-quality language.
We ensure Nursery children are well prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in the summer term in nursery, giving them a secure starting point once they continue on with their school journey into reception.
Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1
When pupils enter reception we teach phonics for 20-30 minutes a day from week 3 in the autumn term. This is built upon from their 10-15 minute lessons in nursery. Pupils will make a strong start in Reception where pupils will focus on phases 2, 3 and 4 of the Little Wandle Scheme.
Teaching reading: Reading practice sessions three times a week
We also teach pupils 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. We use books matched to the pupil’s secure phonic knowledge using the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds assessments and the Big Cat Collins decodable books.
Application of phonics to reading
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: Decoding is the process of seeing written words on a page and being able to say them out loud.
Prosody: Teaching children to read with understanding and expression
Comprehension: Teaching children to understand the text.
In Reception these sessions start in Week 4. Pupils 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 we continue to teach reading in this way for any pupil’s who still need to practise reading with decodable books.
Home reading & Parents as Partners
This year we were utilising ebooks however due to an overwhelming response from our parents in favour of hard copies of books it was decided these hard copies of our books would be allocated weekly every Thursday. A reading for pleasure book will also be sent home for parents to share and read to children. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised parents’ resources to engage our families and share information. You can access the Little Wandle Letters and sounds website
on https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/
Here you’ll find support videos and information on how to support your child’s reading at home.