Phonics and Early Reading at Ogbourne C of E Primary
At Ogbourne C of E Primary School we LOVE to read! We understand that reading is the single most important indicator of future success in school, in all subjects and into future years beyond school. We therefore place a huge emphasis on reading with daily systematic and rigorous phonics sessions in Srings and Brooks and daily reading sessions for fluency and comprehension in Streams and Rivers. We also ensure that Storytime and a shared text happens every afternoon in every class. It’s the moment of calm when children can be immersed in a new and wonderful fictional world. This reflects our belief that reading unlocks many adventures for a child; develops knowledge of the wider world and allows a child to live many lives through escapism within a text. On top of these sessions, every lesson will incorporate reading skills. We ensure that children read at age appropriate levels and our reading curriculum ensures that children are introduced to a wide range of genres, authors and text types as they move through the school.
Phonics and Early Reading at Ogbourne
Phonics
To support the teaching of phonics and early reading at Ogbourne C of E Primary School, we use the DfE validated systematic synthetic phonics programme Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS). The programme is written by the Knowledge Schools Trust in conjunction with Oxford University Press. The essence of the programme is consistency and simplicity and it aims to get children to read well, quickly.
We use a range of fully decodable reading books from Oxford University Press which are aligned with every stage of the phonics programme. Therefore, children are always reading material which is at their phonetic level.
What is phonics and why do we teach it?
Phonics is a method of teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by learning to associate letters or letter groups with the sounds they represent. This is called ‘decoding’. Teaching phonics has been the principal method of teaching reading since the introduction of Letters and Sounds programme in 2007. Many studies have shown this is the most successful method of teaching children to read.
Children will be taught to associate the letter picture (grapheme) with the sound it makes (phoneme). Graphemes can be single letters, a string of two letters – digraph, three letters – trigraph or a longer string. Children will also be taught to recognise split-digraphs. (o-e, i-e, a-e, e- e u-e)
ELS Progression
ELS aims to get children to read well – quickly. There is a clear and quick progression from pre-school to end of KS1.
It follows the phases 2, 3 and 5 introduced by Letters and Sounds in 2007.
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Phase 1 – the critical pre-school years. This phase includes building knowledge of voice sounds, alliteration, rhyme and oral blending. The ability to recognise and use language in these ways is vital to reading success. These skills are strengthened by regular reading to your child at home, songs, nursery rhymes and all verbal interactions.
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Springs Class- Phase 2 is started in the first weeks of school. By Christmas the Springs will have been taught all phase 2 and phase 3 graphemes. In the spring terms Springs will be reviewing phase 3 before learning longer CCVC and CVCC words. By the final term, Springs will take a first look at the phase 5 graphemes. These will be reviewed in more depth in Brooks.
- Brooks children will begin the year by reviewing the previous phases before relearning phase 5 and going on to learn the many alternative spellings and pronunciations. Children will be prepared for the Phonics Screening Check in June.
How do we teach phonics?
Children will experience the same classroom routines within each lesson, which reduces cognitive load and maximising chances of success. This also ensures consistency in each class and in each lesson. In every single lesson, children will be reading.
In phonics lessons children will:
- review previously taught graphemes and Harder to read and spell words with flash cards.
- read single words and sentences
- write words using the spelling sequence before writing
- Write graphemes, words and sentences independently. Handwriting will be reinforced also.
- Read a decodable book or text with a partner
- Oral blend (c/oa/t)– sound talk words using robot arms and blending hands.
What are pure sounds and how do we pronounce them?
We must use pure sounds when pronouncing phonics and supporting children in reading words – this means no ‘uh’ after the sound. If we mispronounce these it will make reading harder for our children
Reading books
Children will be bringing home two decodable books every week. These only contain the graphemes previously taught and are labelled ‘Read by myself’ books. We need children to practise these across the week at home.
Skills being practised:
- Decoding – sounding out
- Fluency
- Expression
- Comprehension
To foster a love of reading children will also bring home a book to ‘Read with someone’ each week. Children can select this book themselves from the class or school library. Please do share this book with your child to help build their vocabulary, knowledge of texts and comprehension.
We also offer families the means to access a range of 136 of the Oxford Owl e-library to expand the range of texts available for children and the means to access them on a screen.
Storytime
Story time is an extremely important part of the school day for children in Springs and Brooks. This helps develop a positive attitude to books and reading from a young age. The sessions provide children with the opportunity to develop their vocabulary, have empathy with characters and start to make connections. We believe it is important for children to grow up with a knowledge of traditional stories and fairy tales and Storytime in Springs and Brooks is a place where these stories can be embedded. We also aim to introduce children to a more diverse range of cultures through texts than they might encounter in their daily lives in this part of the world.
Story time also provides a great opportunity to develop vocabulary. Children love to learn new and exciting words and like to add to the Wow word collections when we come across something new in our stories.
As children progress in Brooks we begin to introduce longer texts and short chapter books to develop sustained listening and give further opportunity for talk around the text.
Fluency
To read fluently we need children to have a strong orthographic map. This means that they learn sounds represented by letters or groups of letters in each word and can recognise them immediately. This is fluency. Without it there is no understanding or comprehension. For example, to consistently recognise that ea in bread spells e we need to read it at least four times for it to go into our long term memory.
Supporting writing
- We use the ELS spelling sequence to support writing.
- ELS introduces children to writing the letters and graphemes immediately.
- Correct pencil grip is taught and correct formation of the letters modelled using the mnemonics for each grapheme.
- In EYFS, the children will print. If your children are writing at home please try to correct any pencil grip bad habits as this is nearly impossible to change even by Year 2.
- We will spend a large amount of time making sure children do this correctly as well as building muscle strength, fine motor skills and good posture habits through activities that may not involve a pencil at all!
- It is important that children read text using fonts they recognise. The Oxford books use a range of fonts which differ very slightly. Ones to watch are K and Q sometimes the font differs slightly.
- In Year 1 we introduce cursive script so children are ready to join or even joining by the end of Year 2 and into KS2. With a cursive script all letters start on the line with a lead in. We have found this helps the children know where to start with tall or short letters. They also produce the lead out – which leads naturally to fully cursive style.
Reading in Key Stage 2
At Ogbourne C of E Primary we are determined that the excellent daily reading sessions in Springs and Brooks in the form of phonics lessons are continued into KS2 and that fluency is placed at the heart of reading. We understand that the cross into KS2 is challenging for many children and that their fluency – not just decoding skills will need continued teaching and explicit practice. Fluency is vital for comprehension and therefore continued enjoyment of books. We believe that inference skills – also vital for understanding – are developed as the result of wide and continued exposure to texts and spoken word at home and school. Therefore our daily KS2 reading sessions will introduce children to two different short texts per week as well as a longer extended text in the form of a chapter book.
Extended read sessions
In the extended read sessions we ensure that there is at least one copy of the text between every pair of children. These texts have been selected to contrast or complement the term’s shared text. These can be found on the Reading spines lists. In these sessions the teacher will model fluent reading, there is time to collect and discuss vocabulary and the children will be encouraged to read aloud to the class. The focus of these sessions will be reading not writing or questioning.
Close read sessions
In the close reading lessons the texts will be extracts from fiction or non-fiction, including information texts, letter, lyrics or poetry. These have been selected to build up children’s knowledge of text types gradually. In these sessions children will have the opportunity to have the text modelled to them by the teacher as well as to pair read. There may be some pre-teaching of vocabulary and knowledge to ensure the text is accessible. There will be some questions based on retrieval or inference which the children will record in their Reading Journals. These will be ‘marked’ in class so the children get the opportunity to learn from others and correct their mistakes. However, the focus of these sessions will be comprehension of the text not writing.
Fluency sessions
The children will have the opportunity to revisit these same texts during the week during the two fluency sessions. The children will continue the method used in KS1 of paired reading – one partner reading, while another points, repetition of sentences leading to fluency and ability to read in a ‘story-teller voice’. This is also an opportunity for the teacher to move around the class and hear children read to their partner.
Example weekly timetable for reading in KS2
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| Close read text A | Fluency read Text A | Extended read chapter book | Close read text B |
Fluency read text B
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Fonetti Read Aloud Challenge
We are delighted to share that our school was the 2024 Small Schools Winner of the Fonetti Read Aloud Challenge.
This achievement celebrates our commitment to developing a love of reading, strong oracy skills and confident expression through shared storytelling and reading aloud. We are incredibly proud of our children and staff for their enthusiasm, creativity and dedication to this challenge.
Winning this award reflects the value we place on reading for pleasure and the joy of stories across our school.
Supporting children with reading and phonics at home
- There are few better ways to improve children’s chances in school and in the wider world than to support them to become independent readers. This should be a pleasurable activity!
- Reading is not just about decoding – it is about understanding language and story, knowledge of vocabulary and how sentences work. All of this gain through listening and speaking.
- Bedtime story – cosy up with a book!