Phonics
Phonics and Early Reading
Parental Involvement and Support
Our school has chosen Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic, synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling.
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds website for Parents -
The resources on this page will help you support your child with saying their sounds and writing their letters. There are also some useful videos so you can see how they are taught at school and feel confident about supporting their reading at home. Find our full Reception and Year 1 teaching programme overview here to see what your child will learn and when.
Phonics Workshops for Parents
Our Phonics workshops help us to share our practice with parents. The aim of these workshops is to develop consistency between home and school, support parents so that they feel confident with what their child is learning at school and how they can support their child’s progress at home.
We have workshops throughout the school year, starting with a welcome and introduction workshop in the Autumn Term. We then have additional workshops covering Phase 2, 3, 4 and 5 as well as early reading support for parents. These sessions are carefully timed throughout the year so that you can support your child as they progress through the alphabetic code. The workshops are designed to showcase phonics and early reading at our school and we get our children involved so that you can see phonics in action!
Parent Workshop 1 – Introduction to Phonics and Early Reading at Springfield Primary School
In this workshop, we will discuss;
- What is Phonics?
- Key terminology used in lessons
- The progression and teaching order
- How we make learning stick!
- How we articulate the sounds
- How we teach reading and spelling
- How we use assessment
- Reading at home and support
You will even get to see a Phonics lesson in action!
Parent Workshops 2 – Phase 2, 3, 4, 5 (separate workshops)
In these workshops, we will focus on the content taught in a particular phase, the phase your child is working on at the time. We will learn how to articulate the sounds in that phase, how we teach letter formation, learning to read and spell and any other content that is relevant. We will show you lots of practical ideas for supporting your child during that phase as well. Parents will be invited to join our lessons with their child and ask any questions that they may have.
If you are unable to attend any of the workshops, please see our recorded versions or get in touch with your class teacher for more support. You can also email your email group email for more support.
Catch Up and Home Learning
If your child is absent from school or you feel like they have some gaps that need additional consolidation, please speak to your child’s class teacher. Together, we can plan how we can support them and ensure they do not fall behind or lose confidence on their reading journey. The Little Wandle Letters and Sounds has a great home learning website, with full lessons that your child can watch, you do not need to teach the lessons yourself. All these videos can be found here.
All children will bring home a weekly phonics home learning sheet. On this sheet you will find out what your child has been learning at school that week. There are activities that you do at home to recap and consolidate their learning and build their confidence. Your child may also receive a letter formation sheet that they can use to practise their handwriting.
Our main aim is to inspire and motivate children to read for pleasure, that is our ultimate goal! Phonics allows children to learn to read quickly and confidently. It is really important that children practise blending (reading) daily, little and often is key! Your child’s reading book will be based on their secure sound knowledge meaning that they should be able to decode and reading this text independently, only stumbling on about one in ten words. If your child does stumble, encourage them to sound out and blend the word, if they become stuck, model this for them and get them to repeat after you. It is important that children don’t lose confidence and that they always feel successful!
Read for pleasure with your child, share their library book and story sack! Get excited and talk about the story. This is a book that they have chosen based on their own interests, it’s a time for them to see your passion for reading and how much joy it can bring! This is what will inspire them and motivate them. Reading unlocks the whole curriculum!