Phonics & Reading 

"A word is a small magic, a spell that can unlock the world" (Jane Yolen) 

At Irlam Endowed, we are passionate about supporting every child to be able to read and write regardless of their starting points. Without the ability to read, children may be unable to access learning opportunities so we are passionate about supporting every child to become independent and fluent readers from the begining of their journey with us. 

Phonics: Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised

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 in the EYFS following the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression mapping. There is a clear focus on children growing their knowledge of the alphabetic code which progresses through the EYFS and into Year 1 in preparation for the Year 1 Phonics Screen. To complete phonics sessions, there are also small group reading sessions following the Little Wandle scheme which aim to consolidate and contextualise sounds for children. 

Phonics Progression Maps (Reception & Year 1)

Pronunciation Guides for Parents & Carers

Reading Fluency (Years 2, 3 & 4)

When children have successfully completed their phonics learning and passed the Year 1 Phonics Screen, they move on to the Little Wandle Fluency scheme. Fluency refers to the number of words within a passage read correctly per minute (DfE Reading Framework, 2023). When children learn to read in Reception and Year 1, they read and reread fully decodable books that allow them to apply their phonic knowledge and practise reading words with accuracy. Rereading books enables them to buid up a bank of words they can read with automaticity. 

As children become more able to read words 'at a glance', they will read the words on the page with increasing ease and speed. Children who can read around 90 words per minute is seen as being a good indicator of when children have developed sufficient fluency to focus on understanding. This means that fluency is a bridge between decoding (sounding out words phonetically) and comprehension. 

To develop children's fluency, we teach fluency sessions from Autumn 2 in Year 2 until children's fluency is well-developed and are able to move on to more formal comprehension activities. Depending on a child's reading journey, these sessions and resources will be used to 'complete the reading code'. 

Reading Comprehension (Years 3 to 6)

When children are secure with their phonics knowledge and are able to read fluently, the focus moves to comprehension. From Year 3, children are introduced to more formal reading comprehension through the Literacy Shed scheme. 

The key focus is on developing children's understanding of different comprehension skills: vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval, summarising and sequencing. These skills are taught through the VIPERS and are used as a point of reference to develop children's understanding of a range of texts. 

Comprehension sessions focus on fiction, non-fiction and poetry texts which aim at broadening children's reading diet and allowing them to experience different genres and writing styles. 

During sessions, children are exposed to different types of questions relating to the texts and themes being covered. Answers are recorded in reading comprehesion books, as well as through discussion in small groups, to embed the fundamental skills needed to retrieve and process information. 

Outside of reading sessions, children will take home an Oxford Reading Tree book (once they have completed Little Wandle Fluency) to support their comprehension and reading stamina. 

Progression in teaching reading comprehension