Phonics and Reading
Phonics and Early Reading
Our Approach:
At Ebbsfleet Green, we believe that reading is the key to success and underpins children's access to the curriculum; it clearly impacts on their achievement. To be able to read, children need to be taught an efficient strategy to decode words. That strategy is phonics. Phonic decoding skills must be practised until children become automatic and fluent reading is established.
We teach all children to read using a systematic, structured phonics programme (Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised), starting in Nursery with foundational skills and continuing in Reception and Year 1 with daily phonics lessons.
Key Features:
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Daily phonics sessions, with keep-up and catch-up support for children who need extra help.
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Focus on decoding, prosody, and comprehension, building fluency across all reading sessions.
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Reading practice three times a week with books matched to each child’s phonics knowledge.
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Home reading to reinforce skills and foster a love of reading.
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Early emphasis on language development through stories, rhymes, and rich vocabulary.
Our Goal:
By the end of Year 1, all children are confident readers, able to tackle unfamiliar words and enjoy reading for pleasure and purpose.
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised
Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is a complete systematic synthetic phonics programme (SSP) and it is the programme that we adopt at Ebbsfleet Green. We prioritise the teaching of phonics; we teach phonics daily in Year R and Year 1. It is vitally important that children review and revisit Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPCs) and words, daily, weekly and across terms and years, in order to move this knowledge into the children's long term memory. Our consistent approach to phonics ensures that children are given the best possible foundation for reading, writing and language skills.
Children need to learn to read as quickly and reasonably as possible, so that they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading. Our expectations of progression are aspirational yet achievable; children who are not keeping up with their peers are given additional practise immediately through keep-up sessions.
Children enjoy a range of multi-sensory resources to support their phonics learning. On-going assessment of children's progress takes place and the books children read in school and take home to read are fully decodable and matched to children's secure phonics knowledge. As well as fully decodable books, children take home a non-decodable book for sharing that can be either read to or with them. These books play an essential role in developing a love of reading; an important distinction is that these books are being shared with the children, but they are using fully phonically decodable books to practise their independent reading.
Please see link below for our Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme progression for Reception and Year One.
Little Wandle Phonics Overview
Phonics and Early Reading Policy
Resources for Parents and Carers
Reading from Year 2 to Year 6
Our Approach:
Building on phonics, children continue to develop reading fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary through structured programmes:
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Little Wandle Fluency in Years 2–3 for fluency and expression.
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Steps to Read (Literacy Counts) from Year 4 onwards for comprehension and strategy skills.
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Reading Plus (from Year 4) to personalise reading practice online.
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Collins fluency-levelled books to take home and consolidate reading skills.
Key Features:
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Daily reading lessons focusing on decoding, prosody, comprehension, and language knowledge.
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Exposure to a wide range of texts through our 100 Story Chest and Book Spine collections.
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Daily collective cuddle sessions where teachers read aloud to classes, nurturing a love of books.
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Regular assessment to ensure children are reading at the right level and making progress.
Our Goal:
All children leave Ebbsfleet Green as confident, fluent readers who read for pleasure and purpose, prepared for secondary school and lifelong learning.
