English
ELS
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PHONICS
Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) is our chosen Phonics program. The aim of ELS is to ‘Get all children to read well, quickly’. All staff at Wixams Tree Primary Academy have been expertly trained to ensure we meet this aim and continuous training is provided to staff who teach Phonics regularly.
ELS teaches children to read by identifying the phonemes (the smallest unit of sound) and graphemes (the written version of the sound) within words and using these to read words. ELS is a whole class teaching model. This means that every single pupil has the same opportunities when learning to read. Learning to read well, early, is a priority for every child. Children who may find it harder to learn how to read are given extra support from their teacher every day. We ensure that all children to learn to read well and keep up rather than have to catch-up.
Children being learning Phonics at the very beginning of Reception, and it is explicitly taught every day. Throughout the day, children will use their growing Phonics knowledge to support them in other areas of the curriculum and will have many opportunities to practise their reading. This includes reading 1:1 with a member of staff, with a partner during paired reading and as a class.
Children continue daily Phonics lessons in Year 1 and further through the Academy to ensure all children become confident, fluent readers.
We follow the ELS progression and sequence. This allows our children to practise their existing phonic knowledge whilst building their understanding of the ‘code’ of our language GPCs (Grapheme Phoneme Correspondence). As a result, our children can tackle any unfamiliar words that they might discover.
We begin by teaching the single letter sounds before moving to diagraphs (two letters spelling one sound), trigraphs (three letters spelling one sound) and quadgraphs (four letters spelling one sound).
We teach children to:
- Decode by identifying each sound within a word and blending them together to read fluently
- Encode by segmenting each sound to write words accurately.
The structure of ELS lessons allows children to know what is coming next, what they need to do, and how to achieve success. This makes it easier for children to learn the GPCs we are teaching (the alphabetic code) and how to apply this when reading.
ELS is designed on the principle that children should ‘keep up’ rather than ‘catch up’. Since interventions are delivered within the lesson by the teacher, any child who is struggling with the new knowledge can be immediately targeted with appropriate support. Where further support is required, 1:1 interventions are used where needed. These interventions are short, specific and effective.
Children experience the joy of books and language whilst rapidly acquiring the skills they need to become fluent independent readers and writers. ELS teaches relevant, useful and ambitious vocabulary to support children’s journey to becoming fluent and independent readers.
ELS is supported by a wide range of completely decodable texts. These cover both fiction and non-fiction and are exciting and engaging for all our pupils. We match the home reading texts to each child’s current phonic knowledge to ensure that they consolidate their most recent teaching and learning at home.
SUPPORTING READING AND WRITING AT HOME
Parents and Carers often ask us how they can help their children with reading at home. The answer is simple: read aloud. Read aloud as often as possible. Children (and adults) love listening to stories and text being read aloud, and for many it is the opportunity to relax and be immersed in another world. The experience of sharing a book with another is even more wonderful! Children can also be encouraged to read aloud to a family member and to also read independently. Please see our recommended book lists for Year 2 to Year 6 children here. Reception and Year 1 book lists will be available soon.
Children, who are first learning to read will only be asked to independently read books that are entirely decodable. This means that they should be able to read these books as they already know the code contained within the book.
- We only use pure sounds when decoding words (no ‘uh’ after the sound)
- We encourage children to practise reading their book 4 times across the week working on these skills:
- Decode – sounding out and blending to read the word.
- Fluency – reading words with less obvious decoding.
- Expression – using intonation and expression to bring the text to life!
We must use pure sounds when we are pronouncing the sounds and supporting children in reading words. If we mispronounce these sounds, we will make reading harder for our children. Please watch the videos below for how to accurately pronounce these sounds.
Information about how to support reading & learning to read can be found within the ELS parent information slides. This includes how many books your child will bring home and ways in which you can further support at home. At the beginning of each academic year, we will hold an information session for parents and carers to find out more about what we do for Phonics, Reading and English at our schools. Please do join us.
More information about Essential Letters and Sounds can be found here.
As children move through the school, they will move on from books linked to ELS and will be able to move onto an even wider selection of books. These books, often chapter books or longer non-fiction texts, will allow children to move towards using books to learn from and to read for pleasure. Please encourage your child to still read extracts of this book aloud to you at times, so to focus on fluency and understanding.
ELS Flashcards - Reception Hard to Read and Spell Words
ELS Flashcards - Year 1 Hard to Read and Spell Words
ELS Grapheme Information Sheet - Phase 2
ELS Grapheme Information Sheet - Phase 3
ELS Grapheme Information Sheet - Phase 5
ELS Resources that can be purchased for home use - Waterstones
ELS Resources that can be purchased for home use - Amazon
READING
‘To encounter characters and worlds that resemble your own can allow for powerful connections to be forged between the reader and the world of the book.’
CLPE: Reflecting Realities 2022 report
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum. It is a central part of every pupil’s life at our Academy. We want to instil a love of reading for our children from the very beginning of academy life and we do this by ensuring that we deliver a high-quality Reading curriculum through a wealth of literature. Children build the knowledge and skills to become confident readers throughout their time with us and this is evident by their continuous engagement, desire to read for pleasure and their understanding of a range of texts, authors, and illustrators.
For our children, learning to read and becoming a reader is a priority for us. We have developed our Reading curriculum to ensure all children have opportunities to and develop understanding in:
- Using their Phonics to lift the words off the page
- Developing communication and language skills particularly by learning new vocabulary and key/familiar phrases
- Applying their Phonics to read words, captions, phrases, sentences and longer texts
- Daily Phonics, Reading and English lessons in EYFS and KS1
- Daily Reading and English lessons in KS2
- Reading as part of the wider curriculum
- Sharing books, authors and illustrators during daily read aloud sessions
- Opportunities to independently read and be immersed in a book
- Engaging in book talk: likes, dislikes, puzzles and connections
WRITING
Our writing curriculum has been developed to inspire children to want to write for a range of purposes. We teach the children specific skills to be able to effectively express their ideas and thoughts when writing for a wide selection of outcomes. Our English writing units vary in stimuli and where possible we make links with our history, geography and science units. Our units are based around: picture books, chapter books, visual literacy (animations), folk tales, traditional tales, poetry and real-life events. We encourage the children to focus on each writing outcome’s purpose, audience, language and layout and to think like a reader when writing. The children have time to self-edit their own work, but also time to work with their partner to peer-edit their work.
POETRY
In EYFS, nursery rhymes, songs and rhyme are a focus, but they also have the opportunity to hear a range of poems being read aloud.
Children in Year 1 to Year 6 will explore different forms of poetry, structure of different poems and explore key poems around different themes. The sessions encompass an understanding of context of certain poems, exploring the type of poems they will study including a poet study, an exploration of language, poetry performance skills and a range of poems to develop thinking and enjoyment. We encourage the children to learn these poems off by heart, so to be performed. There is also opportunities for the children to write their own poetry based on each unit
