Learning Phonics and Early Reading Skills at Wildmoor Heath

At Wildmoor Heath School, our staff are passionate about the teaching and learning of strong early phonics and reading skills. We recognise that reading is an essential life skill that opens up a whole world of information to young minds, from reading a menu to tackling a thesaurus. 

Therefore, we teach all our learners phonics from the start and the development of secure phonics and reading skills is a core part of the whole Wildmoor curriculum. Our philosophy is that ‘Every Child will be a Reader’ at Wildmoor Heath, regardless of when they join us, and we place great emphasis on achieving this aim. All teachers and Learning Support Assistants are trained to deliver high quality phonics sessions following a consistent and progressive methodology and sequence.

Our approach to teaching phonics

We teach reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic synthetic phonics programme.

We teach phonics for 30 minutes a day. In Reception, we build from 10-minute lessons, with additional daily oral blending games, to full-length lessons as quickly as possible. Each Friday, we review the week’s teaching to help children become fluent readers.

Continuous assessment and extra support

Children are placed into dynamic groups across the classes to help them make rapid progress. Children are assessed every half term within their groups. As they learn to blend sounds, children are encouraged to learn ‘tricky words’ (common exception words) that do not follow phonetic patterns.
We timetable phonics lessons for any child in Year 2 and above who is not at age-related expectations for reading or has not passed the Phonics Screening Check. 
 

How we promote a love of reading

Reading opens up a whole wide world of information to a child and is an essential life skill that they will need as they progress onto secondary school. To become a reader, children must know all the phonics sounds and be able to use them to decode words. Over time, children also learn a number of reading strategies to develop their speed and fluency and reading becomes automatic.