Phonics at Anston Brook 
At Anston Brook Primary School we teach phonics using the acredited systematic synthetic programme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised. The principles and practice are used to teach high quality phonics across Early Years Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and within Key Stage 2 targeted additional support.
Intent of Phonics Teaching
'Teach Reading: Change Lives'
At Anston Brook we strive to ensure that all children become successful, fluent readers by the end of Key Stage 1 and believe this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete phonics teaching combined with a whole language approach that promotes a ‘Reading for Pleasure’ culture.
The Rose Report (2006) emphasised high quality phonics as an important part of the word decoding skills required by children to develop higher level whole language and comprehension skills. This approach is in alignment with Anston Brook’s belief that we first ‘learn to read’ and then ‘read to learn’.
Aims
- To teach children aural discrimination, phonemic awareness and rhyme to aid reading, writing and spelling development.
- To encourage the use segmenting and blending so that decoding skills provide a sound foundation for reading, writing and spelling.
- To ensure the teaching of phonics is lively, interactive and investigative.
- To ensure children use phonic awareness across the curriculum.
- To ensure that children know the 44 phonemes within the English language.
- To ensure that children recognise the graphemes within words and associate them with the appropriate phoneme when reading.
- To ensure children are taught strategies to identify and decode ‘tricky words’ within the English language.
Implementation of Phonics Teaching
High quality phonics lessons are taught daily in EYFS and Y1. In some cases, phonics lessons may continue into Y2 and KS2. Each lesson is taught following the teaching sequence set out in the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised SSP.
This means a systematic and progressive phonics and reading programme is in place with a rigorous and robust approach meaning children make rapid progress and start reading from day 1 in FS2.
Children in FS2 and Year 1 are taught a discrete phonics session daily for approximately 20-30 minutes as a whole class, in the Autumn term moving to a 30-45 minutes lesson in the Spring and SUmmer terms. Phonics skills are practiced and embedded in reading and writing through high quality continuous provision, reading practise sessions and individual reading opportunities. We insist that children 'keep up and not catch up' so targeted additional practice is part of our daily routine and is delivered promptly for children to keep on track.
