St Patrick's Catholic Primary Academy

Phonics and Early Reading

Being able to read is the most important skill children learn during their early schooling and has far-reaching implications for lifelong learning, confidence and well-being. At St. Patrick’s Catholic Primary School, we are committed to the delivery of excellence in the teaching of phonics. 

At St. Patrick’s Catholic Primary School we follow the government approved ‘Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised’ phonics programme. In phonics, we teach children that the letters of the alphabet represent a different sound, that these can be used in a variety of combinations and are put together to make words. The children learn to recognise all of the different sounds and combinations that they might see when they are reading or writing. Our phonics teaching starts in Nursery and follows a very specific sequence that allows our children to build on their previous phonic knowledge and master specific phonic strategies as they move through school. 

Each child’s reading journey begins in EYFS where phonics is introduced. They will read phonetically decodable books matched to their phonic ability. As children progress through school and their phonetic awareness develops, they will read books from Little Wandle scheme in the first instance, until they are a fluent reader and secure at phase 5 in phonics. All the children are grouped, in terms of their reading ability in Reception and Year One. The teaching is therefore more focused in terms of children’s progress. The children read using practice reading sessions three times weekly focusing upon the main areas of: fluency, prosody and comprehension.