Early Reading and Phonics
Our approach to Early Reading and Phonics
Whilst all of our children will have been explicitly taught phonics at KS1, at Porchester, we recognise the importance of continuing to embed phonic knowledge throughout KS2. We want to ensure all children are secure in their phonic knowledge as soon as possible and our learning environments and interventions reflect this.
As part of the transition into Year 3, all children complete a phonics screening to identify any gaps in their phonic knowledge and these are targeted through a systematic and rigorous phonics catch up programme during the Autumn term. This involves daily lessons following the DfE accredited No Nonsense Phonics programme. For those children identified as needing further support, intensive 1:1 interventions are targeted at individual needs. These may include difficulties with blending, segmenting or gaps with individual GPCs and tricky words.
No Nonsense Phonics
At Porchester, we believe all children should become competent readers who choose to read. To achieve this, we have a carefully planned approach that is implemented with rigour and fidelity. An essential element of this is our DfE-Validated phonics programme, No Nonsense Phonics. The No Nonsense Phonics programme provides a comprehensive step-by-step method for teaching reading, handwriting and spelling. Author Debbie Hepplewhite guides the teacher and the learner through a series of carefully designed routines to master the complex English Alphabetic Code.
The programme:
- Provides systematic and rigorous phonics teaching and pupil practice from code to word to text level with a content-rich vocabulary-with incidental phonics teaching as required
- Teaches handwriting of upper case and lower case letters and letter groups linked to the Alphabet and the English Alphabetic Code
- Applies and extends phonics to reading and writing cumulative text, developing comprehension and evoking imagination
- Builds up knowledge and understanding of ‘spelling word banks’ from the outset
- Involves and engages the learner fully and routinely in formative assessment
- Enables ample revision and repeat reading as required and ongoing marking and monitoring that is tangible to everyone
- Informs parents/carers/support staff and promotes ‘working in partnership’ as appropriate
No Nonsense Phonics provide our children with a high-level of challenge and an opportunity to really show what they can and cannot do. The paper-based approach ensures practitioners, and the children themselves, are successful and know what areas need support. This enables our staff to respond swiftly and continue to guide the children in mastering the Alphabetic code.
- Each Pupil Book (Books 1 to 9) is rich in content, providing phonics instruction and exercises (print-to-sound for reading, and sound-to-print for spelling) with cumulative alphabetic code (letter/s-sound correspondences), and cumulative words and meaningful texts. Learners develop their language comprehension and build up their knowledge of new vocabulary and spelling word banks. High-frequency words, tricky words and additional letter/s-sound correspondences are drip-fed into the teaching and learning sequence. Mini Stories throughout the books bring all the different strands of the programme together.
Children learn to form all letters and focus on recognising and recalling the ‘code’ contained in their books. They access a ‘Multi-skills’ lesson to learn a new piece of code and then embed this the following day in a ‘Mini-story’ lesson. The range of code they know builds cumulatively so they can read more challenging text and spell confidently with a range of code. To support our children grasp the Alphabetic code, they also access an Alphabetic code chart. This enables them to understand the relationship between code and sounds. They learn how sounds can be represented with text and that certain letters or groups of letters can represent more than one sound.
Would you like to learn more about the English Alphabetic Code? Click here if you do.
Reading Book Bands and Decodable Reading Books
PM Benchmarking is carried out at the beginning of each term (at a minimum) to ensure that children’s books are accurately matched to their reading ability. All children read with an adult at school to ensure their progress through the book bands is carefully monitored and that they are accessing suitable texts.
Those children identified as needing further phonics intervention will be given decodable reading books, matched closely with their current phonic knowledge. They have time to practise reading the book in school before it is sent home. This can sometimes give the impression that the book is too easy. However, just like Goldilocks and the porridge, it is ‘just right.’ Because the children have practised reading the book, they are able to read all of the words in the book and not guess. That means they can continue to read their book at home to work on making it ‘flow.’ To support your child, listen to them read and you might reread parts to them so they can understand how the words can flow. We also want you to read different stories and text to them as that will help them experience far more interesting words than they might find in their ‘learning to read’ books. We also know that sitting together to share a book is a very special moment!
Further resources
If you want to support your child with the ‘learning to read’ journey, you might find the following resources useful:
Learn more about the No Nonsense Phonics Programme
Watch the Flying High Partnership Early Reading lead interview programme author, Debbie Hepplewhite, about the No Nonsense Phonics programme:
What is ‘phonics?’
Develop your knowledge of systematic synthetic phonics by watching this short video:
What are ‘pure sounds?’
Understand and practise ‘pure sound’ by accessing this simple video:
How can I help at home?
Take a look at Debbie Hepplewhite’s parent page.