Learning to read involves both decoding the words and understanding what the text means. These skills are learnt by teaching both phonics and comprehension skills.
Phonics
At Horbury Bridge Academy we use Litttle Wandle Phonics. This comprehensive, systematic programme provides a solid foundation in phonics and literacy, enhancing our students’ understanding and love of language. One of the highlights of the Little Wandle phonics scheme is its beautiful book collection. The engaging and appealing illustrations not only capture the children’s interest but also stimulate their imagination and creativity. The books are instrumental in fostering a love for reading from an early age, and they serve as wonderful resources for both in-school learning and at-home practice.
Teaching Reading: What is Phonics?
Phonics is a way of teaching children to read quickly and skilfully using the sounds that different letters and groups of letters make.
Nursery: Pre Reading Skills
In Nursery we focus on developing listening skills using environmental sounds, musical instruments, rhymes and stories. Little Wandle starts during Upper Nursery when children can begin to distinguish between different letter sounds. Letter sounds rather than letter names are used in learning to read.
Reception to Year 2: Learning to Read
Children learn how to:
- Recognise the sounds that each individual letter makes;
- Identify the sounds that different combinations of letters make – such as ‘sh’ or ‘oo’; and
- Blend these sounds together from left to right to make a word.
Children can then use this knowledge to ‘decode’ new words that they hear or see. This is the first important step in learning to read.
They are also taught to recognise by sight, words like ‘said’, ‘the’ and ‘they’ which can’t be read by breaking them into sounds.
Phonics Screening
The national phonics screening check is a short, simple assessment of Year 1 children each June to check their phonic knowledge. We want all children to be able to read by the end of Year 2 and this check helps us have a clear understanding of what children will need to learn in Year 2.
The focus of the check is to see which sounds the children know and whether they can blend the sounds together which is why they will be asked to read made up ‘nonsense’ words as well as real words
Our children do very well in the Year 1 national phonics screening check and by Year 2, the majority are fluent readers.