Phonics and Spelling in Reception and KS1

At Heage Primary School, we believe that reading is the key to success and underpins children's access to the curriculum; it clearly impacts on their achievement. To be able to read, children need to be taught an efficient strategy for decoding words. That strategy is phonics. Phonic decoding skills must be practised until children become automatic and fluent reading is established. 

Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) and it is the programme that we adopt at Heage. We prioritise the teaching of phonics; we teach phonics daily in Year R and Year 1. It is vitally important that children review and revisit Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence(GPCs) and words, daily, weekly and across terms and years, in order to move this knowledge into the children's long-term memory. Our consistent approach to phonics ensures that children are given the best possible foundation for reading, writing and language skills.

 In Year 2, children recap the trickier parts of the Y1 programme in the Autumn term before moving onto No Nonsense Spelling. This builds on children’s knowledge of the alphabetic code and teaches them how to spell with confidence. The programme provides a seamless link from the core Little Wandle programme to teaching spelling in Year 2.

Children need to learn to read as quickly and reasonably as possible, so that they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading. Our expectations of progression are aspirational yet achievable; children who are not keeping up with their peers are given additional practice immediately through keep-up sessions.

If you would like more information about how to support your child with phonics at home, please follow this link to find the Reception and Year 1 overview as well as videos of the sound pronunciations, letter formation sheets and other helpful resources.

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

Or contact our English Lead, Mrs Cottrell, via the school office. info@heage.derbyshire.sch.uk