Early Reading & Phonics

At Ayresome Primary School, we strive to ensure that all children develop a love of reading that lasts a lifetime. We support children to become successful and fluent readers. We achieve this through discreate phonic lessons and quality first teaching. We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised programme. Our reading journey begins in Pre-nursery and Nursery with lots of exposure to story and rhyme time. Nursery children follow the Little Wandle Foundations for Phonics before they move into more formal phonics delivery in Reception. Children are provided with high quality teaching and carefully matched reading books that help them decode competently to support them in becoming fluent readers.

All teaching staff are trained in delivering Little Wandle letters and sounds.

For children who are at risk of falling behind, teachers redeliver the sound in smaller groups through carefully planning Keep Up interventions in Reception and KS1 or Rapid Catch Up interventions in KS2.

We aim to ensure that parents have the skills to help children read at home, and they have a secure knowledge of phonic sounds and blending skills. Therefore, throughout the school year, we offer parent phonic workshops and Stay and Play sessions. These workshops offer guidance on understanding our systematic synthetic approach to phonics at Ayresome. They provide an insight to how we teach phonics from initial sounds, to blending with confidence, and reading with fluency. Together, we will help your children be successful readers.

Year 1 Phonic Screening Check

The Phonics Screening Check is an assessment designed to evaluate a child’s ability to decode words using their phonics knowledge, including both familiar and unfamiliar words. The test is for all children who are in Year 1 and takes place during the summer term, usually in June. It helps us to celebrate your children’s phonic journey. It helps us to confirm whether they have met the expected standard for a child at the end of Year 1. If your child is unsuccessful at passing the phonics screening test, they have another opportunity to take the test in Year 2.

How does the Phonic Screening Check work?

• There are 40 words that your child must read aloud to a teacher who is familiar to them. The pass mark set by the government is usually about 32 out of 40 but this is subject to change each year.
• Your child may have read some of these words before, while others will completely new.
• The check usually only takes a few minutes to complete.

All children, regardless of their mark, will continue to access phonics learning until the end of Y2 at least. If your child did not achieve 32 marks or more, they will be given additional support in phonics to help them to improve through our Little Wandle programme.

Supporting your child’s reading journey at home

Ask your child’s class teacher about the school’s approach to teaching phonics and how you can reinforce this at home. For example, their teacher will be able to tell you which GPCs (grapheme phoneme correspondence) the class is covering in lessons each week.

For young children:

Nursery rhymes are especially helpful for language and early literacy development.

Play audiobooks or read aloud at home to increase the amount of language your child hears.

Label objects in your home. This can show the importance of language, reading, and writing.

Help your child build background knowledge on a topic. Talk about everyday experiences, show your child pictures, and tell them stories.

• If you use a different language at home, speak and read to your child in that language. This can help grow his vocabulary and make connections at school. It can also increase his curiosity and readiness to learn at school. Learning opportunities in a home language will help literacy learning in English.
• Word games like ‘I-spy’ can also be an enjoyable way of teaching children about sounds and letters as can talking about all the words which surround you, from road signs to shopping lists. If children become aware of the uses of reading, they become much more interested in practising what they know.

For older children:

• Play word games.
• Talk about word meanings and point out interesting or new words when reading together.
• Ask questions before, during, and after reading aloud. This can help your child focus attention on the ideas in the story.
• Before reading, look at the book cover and talk about what might happen in the story. During reading, ask what questions he has about the story. After reading, talk about what happened. Ask your child to sum it up and relate the story to what he already knows or has experienced.

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