How We Teach Phonics at The Hollybrook Schools

At Hollybrook Infant and Junior school, we want to build a culture of reading for enjoyment that will develop a lifelong love of reading which could benefit children in so many ways. We believe that all our children can become fluent readers and writers. This is why we teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. We start teaching phonics as soon as possible when children enter 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.

Implementation

Daily phonics lessons in Reception and Year 1

• We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to the full-length lesson as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.
• Children make a strong start in Reception: teaching begins in Week 2 of the Autumn term.
• We follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised expectations of progress:
  • Children in Reception are taught to read and spell words using Phase 2 and 3 GPCs, and words with adjacent consonants (Phase 4) with fluency and accuracy.
  • Children in Year 1 review Phase 3 and 4 and are taught to read and spell words using Phase 5 GPCs with fluency and accuracy.

Daily Keep-up lessons ensure every child learns to read

• Any child who needs additional practice has daily Keep-up support when possible, taught by a fully trained adult. Keep-up lessons match the structure of class teaching in KS1, and use the same procedures, resources and mantras, but in smaller steps with more repetition, so that every child secures their learning.
• We aim to timetable phonics lessons where possible for any child in Year 2 who is not fully fluent at reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. These children urgently need to catch up, so the gap between themselves and their peers does not widen. We use the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised assessments to identify the gaps in their phonic knowledge and teach to these using the Keep-up resources – at pace. 
• If any child in Year 2 to 6 has gaps in their phonic knowledge when reading or writing, we aim to follow the Little Wandle rapid catch up scheme to help close the gaps promptly.