At All Saints Church of England Primary School, we model the application of the alphabetic code through phonics in shared reading and writing, both inside and outside 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.

Each child’s reading journey begins in EYFS where phonics is introduced. They will read phonetically decodable books matched to their phonic ability. As children progress through school and their phonetic awareness develops, they will read books from the Little Wandle scheme in the first instance, until they are a fluent reader and secure at phase 5 in phonics. All the children are grouped in terms of their reading ability in Reception and Year One.

Teaching is therefore more focused in terms of children’s progress. The children read using practice reading sessions three times weekly, focusing upon the main areas of fluency, prosody and comprehension.

Our Foundations for Reading

We provide a balance of child-led and adult-led experiences for all children that meet the EYFS learning goal expectations in:

1. ‘Communication and language’
2. Comprehension
3. Word Reading

To do this, our nursery children have an opportunity to:

• Listen and share high-quality stories and poems
• Learn a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes
• Take part in activities that develop focused listening and attention, including oral blending
• Have access to high-quality language.

In Nursery, focus texts have been chosen to support each child with their development, with links made to other areas of the EYFS curriculum. The texts used are rotated on a bi-yearly cycle.

We ensure Nursery children are well-prepared to begin learning grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPCs) and blending in Reception.

Collin’s Big Cat Phonics

Our aim for our Early Readers is to get all our pupils at All Saints blending and reading books before the end of their EYFS journey. Using Little Wandle Letters & Sounds as our chosen phonics scheme, it is vital that we show the importance and value in the teaching of phonics. We therefore use the ‘Collins Big Cat Phonics for Little Wandle Letters & Sounds Revisited’. These books were written to match the Little Wandle programme and are the best-fit books. There are three types of reading practice books:

1. Wordless books
2. Decodable books
3. Blending books

In Reception, we move from wordless books to decodable books and the blending practice books are the bridge to reading for those who need it.