We believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school.

• Phonics and Early Reading Policy

Children will continue learning phonics in year 1, following Little Wandle. More focus will also be given to comprehension and understanding of a text. At the end of year 1, children will sit a statutory phonics screening test where they are asked to read words provided by the DfE.

Once children can confidently decode words and read texts independently, they move onto Accelerated Reader for the rest of their reading journey throughout their time at All Saints’. Accelerated Reader allows children to read books that are matched to their reading ability (otherwise called a ZDP) and checks their understanding through an online activity that they complete once they have finished a book.

• Comprehension Policy

We also actively encourage children to develop a love of reading by allowing time for them to share stories with their teachers and each other. Each class, from Nursery up until year 6, has ‘story times’ in which the children listen to their teacher read to them and helps them develop a pleasure for reading and listening to stories.

Ways you can support your children at home

• Listen to your children read and talk to them about the book. Ask questions when you can.
• Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, d d d d – duck’.
• Say: ‘A tall tin of tomatoes!’  ‘Tahir, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A lovely little lemon!’ This is called alliteration. Use names, for example, ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Jack’s jiggling jelly’, ‘Milo makes music’, ‘Najma’s nose’.
• Teach them ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’.
• Odd-one Out – Say a number of words, all but one of which begin with the same sound. See if your child can pick out the odd one. It can be helpful to have the objects there for the child to look at.
• Sounds Scrapbook – Write a letter at the top of each page of a scrapbook. Concentrating on a few letters at a time collect pictures of objects that begin with those letters. Do not use as examples words where the first sound does not make its normal sound such as in giraffe, ship, cheese, thumb. Stick the pictures on the appropriate pages.
• I-Spy – For small children the usual way of playing that starts ‘I spy with my little eye something that begins with ….’ can be too difficult. You can make this easier by providing a clue. ‘I spy with my little eye something that barks and begins with d’.