Phonics

Essential Letters and Sounds

Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen Phonics programme. The aim of ELS is ‘Getting all children to read well, quickly’. It teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words.

Children begin learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception and it is explicitly taught every day during a dedicated slot on the timetable. Children are given the knowledge and the skills to then apply this independently.

Throughout the day, children will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and as a class.

Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the school to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.

We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover.

Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support each child’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.

We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs ‘sh’ (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs ‘igh’ (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs ‘eigh’ (four letters spelling one sound).

We teach children to:

 – Decode (read) by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently

– Encode (write) by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.

The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.

ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.

Supporting Reading at Home:

• Children will only read books that are entirely decodable, this means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.
• We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound)
• We want children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:

                Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.

                Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.

                Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!

We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds.

At the beginning of each academic year, we will hold an information session for parents and carers to find out more about what we do for phonics and reading at our school. Please do join us.

More support for parents and carers can be found here:

https://home.oxfordowl.co.uk/reading/reading-schemes-oxford-levels/essential-letters-and-sounds/

Reading

Parents play a crucial role in the development of a child’s reading journey. Teaching staff will explicitly teach phonemic awareness of the alphabetic code during daily phonics lessons and provide opportunities for children to practise what they have learned in guided reading sessions. We ask that parents provide daily opportunities for children to practise the application of this learning using the decodable reading book that every child will bring home each week.

Each child in Reception and Year 1 will bring home a decodable reading practice book, selected from the Oxford University Press ‘Word Sparks’ reading scheme. This book will align with the Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) taught in the child’s phonics lessons from the previous week. Some of these texts are ‘Partner Texts’ designed with specific parts for an adult and child to read. Your child should be able to read the appropriate parts of the texts by themselves. Listening, supporting and praising your child as they read this book daily will provide invaluable motivation for them to read. Daily readings of the decodable reading practice book will also help to develop fluency and build confidence, both of which are fundamental to the success of becoming a reader.

Where a child is not yet secure in phonics and above Year 1, they will have regular phonics booster/ interventions to close the gaps in their learning as quickly as possible. In addition, these children will also take home a decodable reader in order to maximise the opportunities for such practice.

Decodable Readers

The decodable readers are from the ‘Word Sparks’ series published by Oxford University Press. The series combines explicit emphasis on vocabulary with systematic synthetic phonics practice. Children will learn new vocabulary at the same time as developing their decoding skills, fluency and comprehension.

Love to Read Book

In addition to the decodable readers, each child will take home a ‘Love to Read Book’ that they select from our school reading library. These books are to be read by an adult with the child sitting close by so that they can see the book too. These books will provide important opportunities to develop children’s comprehension skills, through discussions about the pictures, characters and plots. Children thrive on repetition of books that they enjoy, therefore having this book for a week allows for multiple readings and discussion.

Book Banded Books

Children in Year 1, will also bring home a third, additional ‘book banded book’. These books are not fully decodable but will help students’ progress in reading fluency, retelling abilities and comprehension within and beyond the text. These texts should be read with the help of an adult where needed.

Thriving on Repetition

It is not just the number of different stories children listen to that matters. On each re-reading, their familiarity with a story deepens and, with that, comes a greater emotional engagement.

When children ask for a story to be re-read, in effect they are asking for another chance to explore the language, the characters and their feelings, and to relive the emotions they felt on the first reading. They hear the same words read in the same way and gain a sense of comfort in knowing what follows. They wait for their favourite bits, ready to join in or ready to be scared, even when they already know what happens. Their attachment to the story equips them to retell it and, when they have learnt to read, encourages them to read it for themselves.

[Dfe Reading Framework: Teaching the foundations of literacy, July 2021]