Phonics and Early Reading

Rationale

At St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, we recognise the importance of phonological decoding as one of a number of strategies to develop early reading skills. When combined with reading dialogue and the promotion of reading for pleasure, children can apply these skills to tackle unfamiliar texts and to express themselves in written form, thus becoming more independent readers and writers.

At St Joseph’s, we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds revised which is a complete systematic, synthetic phonic programme.

We start teaching phonics in Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme which is progressive and ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. 

We teach children to read through reading practice sessions which include decoding, prosody (reading with meaning and intonation) and comprehension. These are taught by a fully-trained adult to small groups of approximately six children. The books we use match the children’s secure phonic knowledge

Aims

To provide pupils with a clear understanding of how the alphabet works for reading and spelling;

To enable our pupils to become fluent and confident readers with a strong phonological awareness;

To develop pupils’ sight vocabulary to aid fluent reading;

To provide opportunities for repetition and consolidation so that spelling and reading become automatic.